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Vimshottari Dasha Calculator
Which mahadasha you are running now, when it ends, and the full 120-year sequence from your birth nakshatra.
In short
What is Vimshottari Dasha?
Vimshottari is a 120-year cycle of planetary periods. Each of the nine grahas rules one mahadasha of fixed length, from Sun's six years to Venus's twenty. Which one you are born into, and how much of it is left, is set by the Moon's position inside its nakshatra at birth.
This calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your birth details are never sent to us, stored, or logged anywhere.
Which mahadasha you are running now, when it ends, and the full 120-year sequence from your birth nakshatra.
How the starting period is decided
The 27 nakshatras are assigned to the nine grahas three times over, in a fixed order: Ketu, Shukra, Surya, Chandra, Mangal, Rahu, Guru, Shani, Budha. The lord of the nakshatra the Moon occupied at birth rules your first mahadasha.
You do not get all of it. The proportion of that nakshatra the Moon had already crossed is the proportion of the period already spent, so someone born near the end of Rohini begins life with only a fraction of Chandra's ten years remaining.
The order and the lengths
Ketu 7 years, Shukra 20, Surya 6, Chandra 10, Mangal 7, Rahu 18, Guru 16, Shani 19, Budha 17. Together they are 120 years, which is where the name comes from — vimshottari means one hundred and twenty.
The sequence never changes order. Once your starting lord is known, every date that follows is arithmetic.
What a mahadasha is taken to mean
A mahadasha is read as the period in which its lord's promises in the chart come due — not as a verdict of good or bad. A well-placed Shani is read very differently from an afflicted one, and the same nineteen years mean different things in different charts.
Each mahadasha subdivides into antardashas in the same proportions and the same order, which is how a nineteen-year period gets read at a finer grain.
Frequently asked questions
Which mahadasha am I running now?
Enter your date, time and place of birth above. The calculator finds the Moon's nakshatra, works out the balance of the first period from how far into that nakshatra the Moon had travelled, and marks the period covering today.
How long is each mahadasha?
Ketu 7 years, Shukra 20, Surya 6, Chandra 10, Mangal 7, Rahu 18, Guru 16, Shani 19 and Budha 17 — 120 years in total, always in that order.
Does a Shani mahadasha mean nineteen bad years?
No. A mahadasha brings its lord's role in your chart to the surface. Shani well placed can be the period that consolidates a career; the same nineteen years read differently where Shani is afflicted. The period says whose turn it is, not what the outcome will be.
What is an antardasha?
A subdivision of a mahadasha. Each mahadasha is split among all nine grahas in the same proportions and the same order, so a period can be read at a finer grain than nineteen years.