How the Vimshottari dasha works
Vimshottari is the most used dasha system in Vedic astrology. It divides a cycle of 120 years among nine lords: Ketu 7 years, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19 and Mercury 17. The order is always the same, and the lord of your Moon's nakshatra at birth decides where your own sequence starts.
You are rarely born at the very start of a nakshatra, so the first mahadasha is only partly left. The calculator works out how far the Moon had travelled through its nakshatra and shortens the first period by that share. Every period after it runs for its full length.
Mahadasha and antardasha
The mahadasha is the main period. Inside each one, the same nine lords take turns as antardasha (sub-period), each for a share of the mahadasha in proportion to its years. So in a 20-year Venus mahadasha, the Venus antardasha is the longest and the Sun antardasha the shortest.
The table below the form shows all mahadashas for the first 120 years, with the one running today highlighted, and then the antardashas of that mahadasha with their dates. These are facts about timing. They do not say by themselves what will happen in a period.
Reading the dasha table
The first table lists the nine mahadashas in the order they run, with the month each one starts and ends. The first row begins at your birth, and because only part of that period was left when you were born, it is usually shorter than its full length.
The highlighted row is the one that includes today's date. The second table opens that mahadasha and shows its antardashas in the same way, so you can see which sub-period you are in now and when it hands over to the next.
How long each sub-period lasts
The length of an antardasha is the mahadasha's years times the sub-period lord's years, divided by 120. In a 20 year Venus mahadasha, the Venus sub-period lasts 20 times 20 divided by 120, about three years and four months, and the Sun sub-period lasts 20 times 6 divided by 120, exactly one year.
The shortest sub-period anywhere in the system is the Sun inside the Sun mahadasha, a little under four months. The longest is Venus inside Venus. Each mahadasha starts its sub-periods with its own lord and then follows the usual order of the nine planets.
Finer levels and how much to trust a date
Below the antardasha sits the pratyantardasha, a sub-sub-period divided in the same proportions. This page stops at the antardasha. Dates at the finer levels depend more heavily on small differences in birth time and year length, and a period of a few days is easy to over read.
Everything here hangs on the Moon's position at birth, and the Moon moves about half a degree an hour. An hour of error in the birth time can move your dasha dates by roughly three months if you were born in a Sun period and by close to ten months if you were born in a Venus period. Treat the month as the answer, not the day, and check the birth time when a date matters to you.
Settings used
The length of a year used for dasha dates, the ayanamsa and the rule that starts the sequence from the Moon's nakshatra are all listed on the method page. A different year length or ayanamsa can move a date by days or weeks, which is why dates here are shown to the month.
If you only want the period running right now, the current dasha page shows just that, and the free kundli page gives the chart behind it.
Calculated with the Lahiri ayanamsa and whole sign houses; every setting is on the method page. Last checked 2026-10-04.