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Astrology · Personal Astrology
Dasha Analysis
Dasha Analysis reads the Vimshottari dasha sequence — which mahadasha and bhukti are running, when they change, and what the lords of each indicate from their placement in your chart. It is the reading that most directly answers questions about timing.
How it works
From your details to the answer
The chart is cast and read
Your Janma Kundali, divisional charts, running dasha and current gochara are read together.
You receive the analysis
A written answer to the question you asked, with the placements it rests on stated plainly.
Talk it through
A call with the astrologer to go over the reading and the remedies, if you want one.
Guide
When is Dasha Analysis useful?
It is asked for when a dasha change is approaching, when a difficult period is running, or as the timing half of a fuller consultation.
Astrologers differ on method — ayanamsa, dasha system and house division are all matters on which respected traditions disagree. A reading states which conventions it follows, and describes tendency and timing rather than settling a decision for you.
Scope
What the consultation covers
The running mahadasha, bhukti and pratyantar, with the dates each changes
What each period lord owns and occupies in your chart
The relationship between the mahadasha lord and the bhukti lord
Where the next period boundary falls relative to what you are deciding
In the chart
What the astrologer reads for Dasha Analysis
- The mahadasha lord
- The major period sets the frame. What it signifies in your chart comes from the houses it owns and the house it sits in — not from the graha's general nature.
- The bhukti lord
- The sub-period is what varies within a long mahadasha, and is usually the more immediately useful of the two for a question about the coming months.
- The relationship between the two lords
- Classical practice reads whether the bhukti lord is friendly to the mahadasha lord, and how they sit from each other, as much as it reads either alone.
- The period boundaries
- Dasha changes are dates, and they rarely align with anything in the calendar. Knowing where the next boundary falls is often the practical value of the reading.
Sources
What is established, and what varies
The first list is what published practice describes consistently. The second is where schools, regions and sampradayams legitimately differ — and where the astrologer’s own tradition decides the answer rather than a general rule.
Consistently described
- Vimshottari totals 120 years: Ketu 7, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17.
- Each mahadasha divides into nine bhuktis in the same sequence, proportioned by the same year values, and each bhukti divides again into pratyantar periods.
- The starting lord and the elapsed fraction of the first period are determined by the Moon's position within its nakshatra at birth.
Varies by tradition
- Which dasha system is used. Ashtottari, Yogini and Kalachakra are all in current use and give different boundaries from Vimshottari.
- Whether periods below the pratyantar are read. Some practitioners go to the fifth level; others hold that the precision is illusory.
- How the transit is weighted against the dasha where the two disagree, on which there is no settled rule.
In plain terms
The vocabulary of a dasha reading
Dasha Analysis is the reading that most directly answers when. It takes the Vimshottari sequence — which mahadasha and which bhukti are running, when each changes, and what the lord of each rules and occupies in your chart — and reads what the period is classically taken to bring forward. Two people born the same day can be in different dashas, because the sequence starts from the Moon's nakshatra and not from the date; that is why this cannot be read from a table and has to be read from the chart.
- Mahadasha
- The major period, years long, ruled by one of the nine grahas in the fixed Vimshottari order. Its character comes from what that graha rules and occupies in your chart, which is why the same Saturn dasha is a different period in two charts.
- Bhukti, or antardasha
- The sub-period. Each mahadasha divides into nine bhuktis in the same sequence, proportioned by the same year values. Most questions about timing are questions about a bhukti, not a mahadasha.
- The lord's placement
- Where the period lord sits, which houses it rules, and what its dignity is. This — not the graha's name — is what the period takes its character from, and it is the part that has to be read rather than looked up.
- The two lords together
- How the mahadasha lord and the bhukti lord relate — friends, enemies, in aspect, in the same house. A bhukti whose lord is at odds with its mahadasha lord reads differently from one in accord.
- The boundaries
- The exact dates on which periods change. They depend on the ayanamsa, on the Moon's degree, and on which year-length is used, which is why two astrologers can give different dates from the same birth details.
- Pratyantar and below
- Each bhukti divides again, and again. Most readings stop at the bhukti; going further needs a birth time reliable to the minute, and a reading that goes further without one is precise without being accurate.
Related consultations
Timing, at other ranges
A dasha reading is the middle range — closer than a whole life, wider than a season. The other timing readings on this site sit on either side of it.
The whole sequence
All nine mahadashas laid across the decades, in outline. The life reading, for when the question is the shape of the years rather than the period you are in.
Life Prediction →What is passing now
A dasha says when a placement is live; a transit says whether the moment supports it. The transit reading takes Saturn and Jupiter on their own.
Transit Analysis →The year, as a year
If the question is the next twelve months rather than the current bhukti, the annual reading crosses the boundaries and lays the transits over them.
Annual Horoscope →The decision the timing is for
A dasha reading says when. If the question is also what — a job, a marriage, a move — the reading built for that area reads its houses as well.
Career Astrology →The chart under the dasha
Every boundary depends on the Moon's degree, which depends on the birth time. If the time is uncertain, the chart needs rectifying before the dates mean anything.
Birth Chart / Janma Kundali →A period lord that has been named
If you have been told a Shani or a Rahu period is difficult and a japam suggested for it, the japam's page says what the practice is and what it is not.
Shani Japam →Why the dates differ
What moves a dasha boundary
| What it is | How far it moves a boundary | |
|---|---|---|
| The ayanamsa | Lahiri, Raman, Krishnamurti and others place the Moon a fraction of a degree apart. | Weeks, occasionally a month or two — and across a nakshatra boundary, a whole period. |
| The birth time | The Moon moves about a degree every two hours. | A quarter-hour error moves the sequence by a few weeks; an hour, by months. |
| The year length | Whether a dasha year is 365.25 days, 360 days, or a solar year. | Days early in life, accumulating to months by the fourth or fifth mahadasha. |
| Rounding of the balance | How precisely the elapsed portion of the first dasha is computed. | Days to weeks, throughout. |
| The software | Different calculators make different default choices for all of the above. | All of it, silently — which is why a bare date from a website is not a reading. |
The commonest complaint about dasha readings is that two astrologers gave different dates. They usually did so for one of these reasons, and none of them is an error — but the reading should say which choices it made.
Come prepared
Questions worth asking about a dasha
A dasha reading is the one most often reduced to a sentence — you are in a bad period. These are the questions that turn that sentence back into a reading.
- Which mahadasha and which bhukti am I in, and on what dates does each change?
- What does the mahadasha lord rule and occupy in my chart — and so what is the period actually about?
- What does the bhukti lord rule and occupy, and how does it relate to the mahadasha lord?
- Which ayanamsa and which year length did you use, and would another move the boundaries?
- If you call a period difficult, what in the placement makes it so — and does that apply to the whole mahadasha or to particular bhuktis?
- Which of the coming bhuktis would you read as supportive, and for what?
- How reliable does my birth time need to be for the dates you have given, and is it?
- Should I wait for the period to change before deciding something — and what would that actually change?
Suitability
Who this reading is for
- You have been told you are in a bad period and want to know what that means in your chart rather than in general.
- Two astrologers have given you different dates and you want to know why.
- A decision is ahead and you want to know which bhukti it falls in, and whether that one supports it.
- You are at a boundary between mahadashas and want to understand the change.
- A stretch has been difficult and you want it accounted for rather than endured.
- You want the timing question answered on its own, without a reading of everything else.
- You want the dates with the assumptions shown — ayanamsa, year length, birth time — so you can check them.
A dasha says when a placement in the chart becomes active; it does not create events, and a period is not good or bad in itself but only in what its lord rules and occupies in a particular chart. Waiting for a period to change is sometimes wise and sometimes an excuse, and the reading should say which. Nothing here is fated, and nothing in it replaces professional advice where a decision needs one.
Before you book
What to have ready
- Date of birth, time of birth as precisely as you know it, and place of birth.
- Say so if the birth time is uncertain — it can be narrowed by rectification rather than guessed.
- The specific question you want answered, which focuses the reading far more than a general request.
- For a property or premises, the floor plan and the direction the main entrance faces.
Do not act on a reading alone where a decision also needs professional advice — medical, legal or financial. A consultation is one input, and it is offered as one.
Written and reviewed by the AnugrahaSidhi editorial team. Last substantive review: . How we source and correct this material is set out in our editorial policy.
Common questions
Before you book
I have been told I am in a bad dasha. Is that a real thing?
Periods do have characters in classical practice, and some are read as difficult. But a dasha lord signifies through the houses it owns and occupies in your chart specifically — so the same Saturn mahadasha is not the same period in two charts, and a blanket description of a period as bad, without reference to your own chart, is not a reading.
Why do two astrologers give me different dasha dates?
Usually the ayanamsa, or the birth time. The starting point of the sequence depends on the Moon's exact position within its nakshatra, so a small difference in either input can shift every subsequent boundary by months.
Should I wait for a period to change before deciding something?
That is your decision and not the chart's. A reading can tell you where the boundary falls and what the periods either side indicate. Deferring a real decision indefinitely because a period is unfavourable is not what the method is for.
What if I do not know my exact birth time?
Say so rather than estimating. The lagna moves through a full sign in roughly two hours and every divisional chart is computed from the same degrees, so a guessed time propagates an error through the whole reading. Where the time is genuinely unknown the standard approach is rectification — narrowing it by testing candidate lagnas against events that have already happened.
Which languages is the reading available in?
Telugu, Hindi and English. Ask for the one you want when you book.
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