Vimshottari Daśā — AstroWatch Documentation

A 120-year sequence of planetary periods keyed to your Moon's birth nakshatra — surfaced two ways in AstroWatch, a Dashboard strip that appears automatically and a full three-level dialog.

Vimshottari Daśā is a 120-year sequence of planetary periods, keyed to the Moon's birth nakshatra. AstroWatch surfaces it two ways: a compact strip that appears automatically on the Dashboard once you're in Sidereal mode, and a full three-level breakdown in its own dialog. This page covers both.

The 120-year cycle

The same nine lords that rule the nakshatras (see Nakshatras & Padas) each own a fixed span of years in the cycle, always in this order:

Lord	Years
Ketu	7
Venus	20
Sun	6
Moon	10
Mars	7
Rahu	18
Jupiter	16
Saturn	19
Mercury	17

Those nine years add up to 120. The Mahādaśā (major period) sequence always starts with the birth nakshatra's lord — but not from its full span: the first Mahādaśā is a balance period, the portion of that lord's years still remaining based on exactly how far through the nakshatra the Moon had already travelled at birth. Every Mahādaśā after that runs its full span before handing off to the next lord in the fixed order above.

That balance-period math is why two people born under the same nakshatra can be running different Mahādaśās years apart — only the lord order is fixed, not the starting offset.

Three nested levels

Each Mahādaśā splits into nine Antardaśās (sub-periods), proportioned by the same nine-lord years — an Antardaśā's length is Mahādaśā years × Antardaśā lord's years ÷ 120. Each Antardaśā splits the same way again into nine Pratyantardaśās. AstroWatch computes and shows all three levels wherever daśā appears.

Opening the dialog

View → Vimshottari Daśā… — a Pro feature — lays out all nine Mahādaśās as expandable rows, each opening onto its nine Antardaśās, each of those opening onto nine Pratyantardaśās. Whichever period is running right now is auto-expanded at every level and tagged "• now", with a summary line at the top reading something like "Running now: Venus Mahādaśā · Saturn antar · Mercury prati." Like the Nakshatras dialog, it works on a Tropical chart too — the Moon is converted to sidereal via your ayanamsa first.

The Vimshottari Daśā dialog with the Moon Mahādaśā expanded (marked “now”), its nine Antardaśā rows, and the Saturn antardaśā further expanded to show its Pratyantardaśā list with Venus marked “now”.

1 2

1Mahādaśā row — Moon, tagged "• now", auto-expanded to its nine Antardaśās.
2Pratyantardaśā list — the running Saturn antardaśā expanded a level further, with Venus pratyantardaśā tagged "• now".

The Dashboard's Daśā strip

Switch to Sidereal mode and a Daśā strip appears on the Dashboard automatically, in place of the Aspects card — the left column reflows from its usual 60/40 split to 50/50 to make room. On the Natal tab it shows the current Mahādaśā (header badge, e.g. "Mahādaśā: Saturn"), a bar broken into that Mahādaśā's Antardaśā segments with a marker over today's position, and a line underneath — "Now: Saturn – Mercury antardaśā · until Nov 2027." On the Transit tab the same card slot shows Horā instead (the day's planetary hours) — daśā is birth-based, so it only applies to the Natal tab.

The Daśā strip replaces the Aspects card in Sidereal mode — the hatched segment and marker show the running antardaśā at a glance.

What's next

Daśā tells you when a period is active; divisional charts tell you where a planet really sits once you zoom into a finer slice of its sign — the natural next stop: Divisional Charts (Vargas) →