The sign and its names
Vrishabha means a bull, and the sign is drawn as a bull's head. Taurus is the Latin word for bull. It is the second sign. In Devanagari the Sanskrit name is written वृषभ.
Element, quality and ruler
Taurus is an earth sign and a fixed sign. The four elements each hold three signs 120 degrees apart, and Taurus shares earth with Virgo and Capricorn. The earth signs are the second, sixth and tenth of the twelve. The three qualities repeat around the circle, and Taurus shares fixed with Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. The fixed signs sit in the middle of each run of three: the second, fifth, eighth and eleventh. These are traditional labels for sorting the signs.
The ruling planet of Taurus is Venus. Venus also rules Libra. Venus is the brightest planet in the sky after the Sun and Moon. It goes round the Sun in about 225 days, which is why it is always seen close to the Sun, low at dawn or dusk.
The nakshatras in Taurus
Taurus covers sidereal longitude 30 to 60 degrees, which is exactly nine padas, or two and a quarter nakshatras. The nakshatras with a part inside it are: Krittika (padas 2 to 4); Rohini (all four padas); Mrigashira (padas 1 to 2). Their ruling planets are Sun, Moon and Mars. Taurus follows Aries and holds the Pleiades, the cluster that marks Krittika, in its first part. Its opposite sign is Scorpio.
The Moon takes about two to two and a half days to cross a sign, so a moon sign of Taurus lasts that long each month. The nakshatra the Moon is in narrows it down further. Use the nakshatra finder to see both for your birth.
Moon sign Taurus and Sun sign Taurus
Your Vedic moon sign, the rashi, is the sidereal sign the Moon was in at birth. Your Western sun sign is the tropical sign the Sun was in. They are different measures, and the sidereal zodiac sits about 24 degrees 13 minutes behind the tropical one in 2026.
For Taurus the dates show it. In 2026 the Sun is in sidereal Taurus from 15 May 2026 to 15 June 2026, and in the Western Taurus from 20 April 2026 to 21 May 2026. Only about 6 days of those two ranges overlap, so most people with a Western sun sign of Taurus have a Vedic sun sign in Aries, and a moon sign in any of the twelve. The moon sign changes every couple of days, so the moon sign calculator asks for your birth time and place.
The padas of Taurus and the navamsha
The nine padas inside Taurus take nine navamsha signs in a row. They start at Capricorn and run on to Virgo, then the next sign, Gemini, starts again at Libra. That is how a single degree of the moon sign points to a second sign in the D9 chart, which is read for finer detail.
Counting from Taurus
Vedic readers often count planets by their distance in signs from the moon sign, called the position from the Moon. With a moon sign of Taurus, the count runs: Gemini is second, Cancer is third, Leo is fourth, Virgo is fifth, Libra is sixth, Scorpio is seventh, Sagittarius is eighth, Capricorn is ninth, Aquarius is tenth, Pisces is eleventh, Aries is twelfth. The sign opposite Taurus is Scorpio, and the two signs in a trine with it are Virgo and Capricorn.
Sun in Taurus: Vrishabha Sankranti
The Sun enters Vrishabha in mid May. It starts the Tamil month Vaikasi and the Malayalam month Edavam.
Calculated with the Lahiri ayanamsa and whole sign houses; every setting is on the method page. Last checked 2026-10-04.