Your complete mahadasha timeline with exact start and end dates, the antardasha you are running right now, and the balance of dasha you were born into — computed from your Moon’s nakshatra using the Lahiri ayanamsa. Free, no signup.
Deterministic Vedic calculation (Lahiri ayanamsa). No signup required.
Vimshottari means “one hundred and twenty”. The nine planetary periods total exactly 120 years and always run in the same order — Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury — then repeat. Where you enter that cycle is what your birth chart decides.
| Mahadasha | Years | What it tends to activate |
|---|---|---|
| Ketu | 7 | detachment, loss of interest in the material, spiritual turns and sudden endings |
| Venus | 20 | relationships, comfort, art, wealth and the pleasures of settled life |
| Sun | 6 | authority, recognition, father, self-definition and public standing |
| Moon | 10 | mind, mother, home, emotional life and matters that fluctuate |
| Mars | 7 | drive, conflict, property, siblings and decisive physical action |
| Rahu | 18 | ambition, foreign lands, unconventional gains and abrupt reinvention |
| Jupiter | 16 | growth, teaching, children, faith and expansion of every kind |
| Saturn | 19 | discipline, delay, endurance, career structure and slow earned reward |
| Mercury | 17 | intellect, communication, commerce, study and skilled work |
Each planet links to a fuller guide to living through that period.
The calculation begins with the Moon, not the Sun or the ascendant. At the moment of your birth the Moon occupied one of the 27 nakshatras, and every nakshatra is ruled by one of the nine planets — Ashwini by Ketu, Bharani by Venus, Krittika by the Sun, and so on through the cycle three times over. The lord of your birth nakshatra owns your first mahadasha.
But you are almost never born at the exact start of a period. The Moon had already travelled some distance into that nakshatra, and the proportion still remaining is the balance of dasha at birth. If the Moon was 40% of the way through a nakshatra ruled by Jupiter, you were born with 60% of Jupiter’s 16-year period left — about 9 years 7 months — and the Saturn mahadasha follows from there. This is why two people born on the same day but hours apart can be running different periods for the rest of their lives.
A mahadasha is too long a stretch to describe a single mood, so each divides into nine antardashas that run in the same planetary order, starting with the mahadasha lord itself. Their lengths are proportional, and the formula is simple:
antardasha length = (mahadasha years × antardasha planet years) ÷ 120
So within a 19-year Saturn mahadasha, the Venus antardasha runs 19 × 20 ÷ 120 — a little over 3 years 2 months — while the Sun antardasha lasts under a year. Each antardasha divides again by the same formula into nine pratyantardashas. The three levels together narrow the picture from a decade to a year to a matter of weeks, which is why practitioners read all three before saying anything about timing.
A period does not deliver a fixed verdict. A mahadasha activates whatever its lord actually does in your chart — the sign it sits in, the houses it rules and occupies, its dignity, and what aspects it. The same Saturn period that reads as grinding delay in one chart reads as the decade a career finally consolidates in another. Treat the timeline as a map of which themes come forward when, not a schedule of fortunes.
Two related periods worth checking alongside your dasha: Sade Sati, Saturn’s seven-and-a-half year transit over the Moon, and your current planetary transits, which act on whatever the running dasha has already put in motion.
A mahadasha is a major planetary period in the Vimshottari system, lasting from 6 years (Sun) to 20 years (Venus). During a planet’s mahadasha, that planet’s placement, strength and house rulership in your birth chart become the dominant theme of your life.
Your dasha sequence is fixed by the nakshatra your Moon occupied at birth. Each of the 27 nakshatras is ruled by one of nine planets, and that planet owns your first mahadasha. How far the Moon had already travelled through the nakshatra determines how much of that period was already spent — the balance of dasha at birth. Enter your birth date, time and place above and the full timeline is computed for you.
Each mahadasha subdivides into nine antardashas (sub-periods) running in the same planetary order. The length of each is proportional: antardasha years equal the mahadasha planet’s years multiplied by the antardasha planet’s years, divided by 120. For example, the Venus antardasha inside a Venus mahadasha lasts 20 × 20 ÷ 120, or about 3 years 4 months.
A pratyantardasha is the third level of subdivision — each antardasha divides again into nine parts by the same proportional formula. Mahadasha sets the decade, antardasha sets the year or two, and pratyantardasha narrows timing to weeks or months.
An approximate time is usually workable. The dasha timeline depends on the Moon’s longitude, and the Moon moves about 13 degrees a day — roughly one nakshatra every 24 hours. An error of a few minutes shifts your dasha dates only slightly, though an error of several hours can move them by months, and a wrong date can change the starting planet entirely.
The nine planetary periods sum to 120 years — Ketu 7, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19 and Mercury 17. Classical texts treat 120 years as a full human lifespan, so the cycle is designed to cover a life without repeating.
No period is inherently good or bad. A mahadasha activates whatever that planet actually does in your chart — its sign, house, dignity and aspects. A well-placed Saturn can bring the most solid career of a lifetime; a strained one asks for patience. The planet sets the theme, the chart sets the tone.