What a mahadasha is. Vimshottari splits 120 years between 9 lords, in a fixed order with a fixed length each. Ketu 7 years, Shukra (Venus) 20, and so on down the list below. The Moon's nakshatra at the moment of birth decides which lord is running when you arrive.
And you arrive partway through it. That first period started before you were born, so what an almanac prints is the balance — the part still to come. It is the one mahadasha nobody gets in full. For most people it is also a short one.
Which dasha am I born in?
Near a ninth chance of each. Every lord owns 3 of the 27 nakshatras, and the Moon enters all 27 equally often, so the shares measured over 5,000 charts run from 10.1% to 11.8% against an even 11.1%. Which lord opens your chart is about as close to a nine-sided coin as the sky gets.
| Lord | Full span | Share of charts | Years left, on average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ketu | 7 years | 11.8% | 3.57 |
| Shukra (Venus) | 20 years | 10.7% | 10.06 |
| Surya (Sun) | 6 years | 10.1% | 3.03 |
| Chandra (Moon) | 10 years | 10.9% | 4.94 |
| Mangal (Mars) | 7 years | 10.7% | 3.56 |
| Rahu | 18 years | 11.3% | 8.35 |
| Guru (Jupiter) | 16 years | 11.7% | 7.91 |
| Shani (Saturn) | 19 years | 11.2% | 9.35 |
| Budha (Mercury) | 17 years | 11.5% | 8.25 |
The spans in the second column add to 120 years, which is the whole cycle, and they are the same in every chart ever cast. The last column is half the span each time, because on average the Moon is halfway through the arc.
How much of the first dasha is left?
6 years and 7 months on average. The middle value is 5 years and 5 months. The gap between those two is itself the finding. Nine spans running from six years to twenty, piled together, lean to the left, so the average sits above the middle and more than half of all charts are below it. The measured range runs from almost nothing to 19.98 years.
9.2%
are born with under a year left
Of 5,000 charts. That first dasha is over before the first birthday.
8.0%
are born with more than fifteen years left
Only the 5 longest lords can give this much: Shukra (Venus), Rahu, Guru (Jupiter), Shani (Saturn) and Budha (Mercury).
45.9%
are finished before the fifth birthday
Rising to 98.3% by the eighteenth.
Balance at birth in two-year bands, labelled by the lower edge: 0 to 2 years, 18.6%; 2 to 4 years, 18.5%; 4 to 6 years, 18.5%; 6 to 8 years, 11.8%; 8 to 10 years, 9.1%; 10 to 12 years, 6.1%; 12 to 14 years, 6.2%; 14 to 16 years, 5.7%; 16 to 18 years, 3.8%; 18 to 20 years, 1.7%.Two-year bands, labelled by the lower edge. The first three hold 55.6% between them, which is why the middle value sits so far under the average. The tail on the right belongs to the 5 longest lords, and nothing shorter can reach it.
Ketu runs 7 years and Shukra (Venus) runs 20, one after the other. At the arc boundary between them the balance jumps from almost nothing to the full 20 years. Two births a few minutes apart, on either side of one line in the sky.
Is the balance spread evenly inside a nakshatra?
Yes, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. The balance is read from the Moon's longitude, but births fall evenly through time, and the Moon does not cross an arc at a steady speed. Measured over 5,000 charts, the ten bands of the arc hold 9.6% to 10.8% each, against an even 10%.
even · 10%
Share of charts by how far into the nakshatra the Moon had travelled, in tenths: 0 to 10%, 9.7%; 10 to 20%, 9.6%; 20 to 30%, 9.9%; 30 to 40%, 9.7%; 40 to 50%, 10%; 50 to 60%, 10.8%; 60 to 70%, 10%; 70 to 80%, 10.4%; 80 to 90%, 9.9%; 90 to 100%, 10.1%.Ten bars against the 10% an even spread would give, and the mean lands on 0.505. If this were not flat, every figure above would lean the same way and nothing on the page would say so.
When does the first dasha end?
Before the fifth birthday for 45.9% of charts, and before the eighteenth for 98.3%. So for almost everybody the first mahadasha is a childhood period, and it is over before there is much memory of it. The second one in the sequence is the first a person gets in full, and it is the one that covers most of a life they can remember.
The dasha page works the whole timeline out from a birth date, time and place: the nakshatra, its lord, the balance at birth, and every mahadasha and antardasha after it.
Questions people ask about the first dasha
Which dasha am I born in?
Whichever of the nine lords owns the nakshatra the Moon was in at your birth. Each lord owns 3 of the 27 arcs, so measured over 5,000 charts the shares ran from 10.1% to 11.8% against an even 11.1%. No lord is rarer than another.
What is the dasha balance at birth?
It is how much of the first mahadasha is still to come when you are born. The first period started before birth, so only the remainder applies to you. Over 5,000 charts the balance averaged 6 years and 7 months, with a middle value of 5 years and 5 months.
Why is my first dasha so short?
Two things make it short, and neither is about you. The Moon may have been far into its nakshatra, leaving little of the period behind it. Or the lord may simply be a short one — Surya (Sun) runs 6 years in full against Shukra (Venus)'s 20.
Can two people born on the same day have different first dashas?
Yes. The Moon crosses a nakshatra boundary a little more than once a day, so two births hours apart can fall either side of one. At that boundary the lord changes and the balance resets to the new lord's full span.
How accurate does my birth time need to be for the dasha?
Quite accurate. The Moon moves about 13° a day, so ten minutes shifts it roughly 5 minutes of arc — enough to move a dasha start date by months. Near a nakshatra boundary the same ten minutes changes the lord and the whole balance.
What is the longest first dasha anyone can have?
20 years, the full span of Shukra (Venus), and only for a birth right at the start of one of its three nakshatras. The longest measured in this sample was 19.98 years. The shortest possible is zero, at the far end of any arc.
What this does not cover
- Birth time decides this, and sharply. The Moon moves about 13° a day, so ten minutes of error moves it roughly 5 minutes of arc, which can shift a dasha start date by months. At a nakshatra boundary the same ten minutes changes the lord and the whole balance. A time rounded to the nearest half hour does not pin this down.
- Lahiri ayanamsa only. The nakshatra boundaries are fixed to the stars through one ayanamsa, and this engine computes Lahiri and no other. A different ayanamsa moves every boundary, and moves every figure here with it.
- A dasha year here is 365.25 days. Some traditions count a 360-day savana year instead, which pulls every date in the timeline earlier. The engine uses 365.25 and says so rather than leaving it implied.
- Mahadasha only. Antardasha and pratyantardasha are computed by the engine and are not measured on this page. The same arithmetic applies one level down: the first antardasha inside the first mahadasha is partial too.
- Births sampled evenly through time, which is not how human births fall. Real births have seasonal patterns, and nothing here measures them.
- Nothing here says what a dasha brings. The texts assign significations to each lord. This page counts years, and running the two together is exactly the step this site does not take.