Week 8 · Unit 2 · Timing - The Dasha Systems
Milestone 2 of 3: Building the sequence
Building the Viṁśottarī Sequence
Nakshatra, balance at birth, and the nine periods — the one calculation in this course worth doing by hand.
Assumes you have done: Unit 1 of this week, and the nakshatra scheme from Week 2
Why this matters
Almost every calculation in this course belongs to software, and this one does too. But you should do it by hand once, because the balance-at-birth computation is what makes the nakshatra basis of the whole system concrete. A person who has worked out that a life begins part-way through a period, and seen exactly why, understands Viṁśottarī differently from a person who has only read a printout of it.
Learn
Five verses. That is the whole construction, and it is the Core content of the largest chapter in BPHS.
The three inputs
The birth nakshatra. Where the Moon is at birth, among the twenty-seven.
The nakshatra’s lord. From the repeating cycle: Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury — running from Ashwini and repeating three times across the twenty-seven.
How far into that nakshatra the Moon has travelled.
From those three, everything else follows.
The calculation
Verse 16, in ordinary language: multiply the daśā years of the nakshatra’s lord by the fraction of the nakshatra already elapsed. That is how much of the period is already gone at birth. Subtract it from the full period and you have the balance at birth.
Work one slowly.
The Moon is at 4°00′ into a nakshatra. A nakshatra spans 13°20′, which is 13.333 degrees.
Elapsed fraction: 4 ÷ 13.333 = 0.30.
The lord is Jupiter, whose period is 16 years.
Consumed: 16 × 0.30 = 4.8 years.
Balance: 16 − 4.8 = 11.2 years, or about eleven years and two months.
So this person is born 4.8 years into a Jupiter Mahādaśā, with 11.2 years of it remaining. Then Saturn for 19, Mercury for 17, Ketu for 7, Venus for 20, and so on around the cycle.
Bhayāta and Bhabhoga, at last
The verse uses two terms you have already met: Bhayāta, the elapsed portion of the nakshatra, and Bhabhoga, its full span.
They came up in Chapter 5, in Week 2, in the middle of a long passage about finding the Moon’s position from an almanac. At the time they looked like arcane bookkeeping.
Here they carry the entire timing system.
This is worth registering as a feature of how BPHS is built. Terms get introduced without ceremony, dozens of chapters before they matter, and if you skimmed the chapter they appeared in you meet them again as unfamiliar. It is one of several reasons this course reads Chapter 5 properly rather than skipping it.
Where the uncertainty lives
The Moon moves roughly half a degree an hour — faster than any other body by a wide margin.
So an hour of birth-time uncertainty shifts the elapsed fraction by about 0.5 ÷ 13.333, which is close to 4% of a nakshatra.
Four percent of a twenty-year Venus period is about ten months.
And here is the part that matters: every subsequent boundary is measured from the end of the first. That ten-month error does not average out. It carries through the entire sequence, unchanged, for a hundred and twenty years.
What you now have
For any chart with a birth time, you can produce the complete sequence of nine Mahādaśās covering a hundred and twenty years, with a defensible statement of how much confidence to put on the boundaries.
What you cannot yet do is say what any of it means. A period is a name and a span; what it delivers is the next two units, and the second of them contains the most important structural rule in the course.
Read BPHS
This is the source itself. The teaching above prepares you for it; it does not replace it.
कृत्तिकातः समारभ्य त्रिरावृत्य दशाधिपाः ।
आ-चं-कु-रा-गु-श-बु.के-शुपूर्वा विहगाः क्रमात् ॥ १२ ॥
वहिभाज्जन्मभं यावद् या संख्या नवततष्टिता ।
शेषाद्दशाधिपो ज्ञेयस्तमारभ्य दशां नयेत् ॥ १३ ॥
विंशोत्तरशतं पूर्णमायु: पूर्वमुदाहृतम् ।
कलौ विंशोत्तरी तस्माद् दशा मुख्या द्विजोत्तम ! ॥ १४ ॥
12-14: Commencing from Kritika, the Dasa lords in succession would be Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus; in the three cycles of Nakshatras. The number of Nakshatras between Kritika and the birth Nakshatra be divided
| No. | Dasas | दशा | NO. | Dasas | दशा |
| 1 | Vimshottari | विमशोत्तरी | 17 | Yogardha | योगार्ध |
| 2 | Astottari | अष्टोत्तत्री | 18 | Kendradi | केन्द्र |
| 3 | Shadsottari | षाठशेत्तरी | 19 | Karaka | कारक |
| 4 | Dwadashoitari | द्वादशोत्तरी | 20 | Mandooka | माण्डूका |
| 5 | Panchsottari | पंचसोत्तरी | 21 | Shoola | शूल |
| 6 | Shatabdika | शताव्दिका | 22 | Trikona | त्रिकोण |
| 7 | Chalurashitisama | चालूरक्षितिसमा | 23 | Driga | दृग |
| 8 | Dwisapatatisama | द्विसपटातीसमा | 24 | Rashi | राशि |
| 9 | Shashtihayani | षष्टीहायानी | 25 | Panchswara | पंचसवार |
| 10 | Shatrimshat sama | षठत्रिम्हात समा | 26 | Yogini | योगिनी |
| 11 | Kala | काल | 27 | Pinda Amsa | पिंडा आशं |
| 12 | Chakra | चक्र | 28 | Naisargika | नैसर्गिक |
| 13 | Kalachakra | कालचक्र | 29 | Ashtakavarga | अष्टवर्ग |
| 14 | Chara | चर | 30 | Sandhya | सन्ध्या |
| 15 | Sthira | स्थिर | 31 | Pachaka | पाचक |
| 16 | Brahma-Graha | ब्रम्हा ग्रह | 32 | Tara | तारा |
by 9. The remainder will indicate the Dasa lord if counted from the Sun. (Let us suppose the remainder being 5, then the Dasa lord will be Jupiter at the time of birth. The subsequent Dasas will be in the same order i.e. after Jupiter comes the Dasa of Saturn, Mercury, Ketu and so on)
O Brahmin! The full span of life of man in ‘Kalayuga’ is said to be 120 years (Purna Ayu). Therefore, amongst the various Dasas, Vimshottari Dasa is the prime Dasa system.
दशासमाः क्रमादेषां षड् दशाऽश्वा गजेन्दवः ।
नृपाला नवचन्द्राश्च नगचन्द्रा नंगा नखाः ॥ १५ ॥
15: The number of years assigned to each planet (lord of the Dasa) the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu and Venus are 6, 10, 7, 18, 16, 19, 17, 7, 20 respectively. The Dasa at the time is determined from the Nakshatra in which Moon is in transit at the time of birth which is called birth (Janma) Nakshatra.
दशामानं भयातघ्नं भभोगेन हृतं फलम् ।
दशाया भुक्तवर्षाद्य भोग्यं मानाद् विशोधितम् ॥ १६ ॥
16 : Multiply the Dasa years of the planet, in whose Dasa the birth takes place by Bhayaata [The expired (elapsed) period ot the Nakshatra] and divide it by Bhabhoga [The full period to be traversed by the Nakshatra]. The resultant value will represent the period consumed in the Dasa of the planet till the time of birth. By deducting this figure from the full duration of the Dasa of the planet, the balance Dasa of the said planet is arrived at. (For terms Bhagyaata and Bhabhoga please refer to page 65 of volume 1).
Practice
State the balance-at-birth calculation from verse 16.
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: Multiply the daśā years of the planet whose nakshatra the Moon occupies by Bhayāta — the elapsed portion of the nakshatra — and divide by Bhabhoga, the nakshatra's full span. That gives the period already consumed; the remainder is the balance.
A proportion, nothing more. If the Moon is a quarter of the way through a nakshatra whose lord has a twenty-year period, five years of that period are already gone at birth and fifteen remain. Note that the verse gives you the consumed portion; the balance is what you subtract it from.
Source: BPHS 48.16
The Moon is at 4°00' of a nakshatra whose full span is 13°20', and whose lord is Jupiter. What is the balance at birth?
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: Twelve years and about two months of Jupiter.
4°00' of 13°20' is 4/13.333, which is 0.3. So 30% of Jupiter's sixteen years is consumed — 4.8 years — leaving 11.2 years. Check your arithmetic against that: if you got 12.2 or 11.8 you have made a rounding slip; if you got 4.8 you gave the consumed portion instead of the balance. Both errors are common the first time.
Why is the first Mahādaśā almost always partial?
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: Because the Moon is almost never exactly at the start of a nakshatra at birth, so part of the ruling period has already elapsed.
The odds of being born with the Moon at exactly 0°00' of a nakshatra are negligible, so essentially every chart begins part-way through a period. This is worth sitting with because it is a genuinely elegant feature of the system: the sequence is not reset by birth, it is joined by birth. The cycle was already running.
How does a birth time uncertain by an hour affect the sequence?
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: The Moon moves about half a degree an hour, so the elapsed fraction shifts by roughly 4% of a nakshatra — which moves every period boundary in the whole sequence by a corresponding amount.
Work an example. For a twenty-year Venus period, 4% is about ten months. And because every subsequent period boundary is measured from the end of the first, that ten-month error carries all the way through the sequence. This is the single most important consequence of the Week 2 material for the back half of the course, and it means a period boundary is never as sharp as its printed date looks.
Two people are born on the same day in the same city, ninety minutes apart. How different are their Viṁśottarī sequences?
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: Slightly but consistently — the same nakshatra lord and the same order of periods, with every boundary shifted by roughly a year.
Unless one of them was born near a nakshatra boundary, in which case they have entirely different starting lords and their sequences diverge completely for the rest of their lives. That is the case worth being alert to: check whether the Moon is near a nakshatra edge before trusting any of this, and say so if it is. The chart data in this course flags exactly that condition for you.
Apply it to a chart
Chart C — Leonardo DiCaprio, the timing chart — Birth-certificate data and a well-dated public record — which is what makes timing work possible at all. · about 26 min
| Graha | Sign | House | Degree | Nakshatra | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun | Libra | 2 | 25°09'44" | Vishakha 2 | debilitated |
| Moon | Virgo | 1 | 23°10'19" | Hasta 4 | neutral |
| Mars | Libra | 2 | 16°05'31" | Swati 3 | neutral |
| Mercury | Libra | 2 | 6°15'25" | Chitra 4 | neutral |
| Jupiter | Aquarius | 6 | 14°35'29" | Shatabhisha 3 | neutral |
| Venus | Libra | 2 | 26°23'27" | Vishakha 2 | own sign |
| Saturn | Gemini | 10 | 25°17'48" | Punarvasu 2 | neutral |
| Rahu | Scorpio | 3 | 17°46'00" | Jyeshtha 1 | not assigned in BPHS |
| Ketu | Taurus | 9 | 17°46'00" | Rohini 3 | not assigned in BPHS |
| Lagna | Virgo | 1 | 9°37'18" | Uttara Phalguni | lord Mercury |
Chart C's Moon is in Hasta, pada 4. Everything about the timing of this life, as this system reads it, follows from that single fact — and the balance calculation is what converts it into dates.
- Chart C's Moon is at 23°10' Virgo. Hasta runs from 10°00' to 23°20' Virgo. Compute Bhayāta — how far into the nakshatra the Moon has travelled — and Bhabhoga, the nakshatra's full span. Express the elapsed portion as a fraction.
- Hasta's lord is the Moon, whose period is 10 years. Multiply 10 by the unelapsed fraction to get the balance at birth. Compare your answer with the figure in the chart library.
- Now build the sequence forward: the balance of the Moon period, then Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19. Give approximate start and end dates from a birth date of 11 November 1974.
- Check your dates against the Mahādaśā table. Where you differ by a few months, work out why — the usual cause is the year length used, and the difference is real rather than an error.
- Now Chart B. Einstein's Moon is at 21°47' Scorpio, in Jyeshtha. Compute the balance and build the sequence. Then look at the documented timeline beside it and notice — without concluding anything yet — where the period boundaries fall.
- Do the same for your own chart, by hand, once.
Check your understanding
Answer from memory first. Looking back at the reading before you try turns a memory test into a copying exercise.
What are Bhayāta and Bhabhoga?
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: Bhayāta is the elapsed portion of the birth nakshatra; Bhabhoga is its full span.
Both terms come from Chapter 5 in Week 2, where they were used to find the Moon's position from an almanac. They looked like arcane bookkeeping then; here they carry the entire timing system. Classical texts do this constantly — a term introduced without ceremony forty chapters before it matters.
Source: BPHS 5.5–8, 48.16
A nakshatra spans 13°20'. Why that number?
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: Because 360 degrees divided by 27 nakshatras is 13°20' exactly.
And each nakshatra divides into four padas of 3°20', which is also the span of a Navāṁśa — which is why the nakshatra pada and the Navāṁśa sign are two views of the same division. That connection is worth having: it is why the Moon's pada tells you something about its Navāṁśa position.
Someone's sequence says their Saturn Mahādaśā begins on 14 March 2031. What do you actually know?
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: That it begins around that time, with an uncertainty of months determined by the quality of the birth time.
And also that the year length convention matters — a 365.25-day year and a 365.2422-day year diverge measurably over a hundred and twenty years. Different software makes different choices. The honest form of the statement is "some time in early 2031", and if someone gives you a date to the day without qualification, they have not thought about where it came from.
Where in BPHS is the Viṁśottarī construction?
Write your answer down before opening the explanation.
Show the answer and why
Answer: Chapter 48, verses 12 to 16. Five verses.
Five verses out of two hundred and ten, and they are the Core content of the largest chapter in the book. Being able to say that precisely is part of understanding how BPHS distributes its weight — word count is a poor guide to importance, as it was in Chapter 3.
What you carry forward
Two things grow across the whole course. This unit adds to both.
To your chart-analysis process
- **Step 12 (continued) — apply Viṁśottarī timing.** Build the Mahādaśā sequence from the birth nakshatra, note the balance at birth, and record the birth-time uncertainty as a margin on every period boundary.
To your field manual
- Balance at birth (48.16): consumed = daśā years × (Bhayāta ÷ Bhabhoga). Balance = full period − consumed.
- Bhayāta = elapsed portion of the birth nakshatra; Bhabhoga = its full span, 13°20'.
- Nakshatra span 13°20' = 360÷27. Pada span 3°20' = the same span as a Navāṁśa.
- The first Mahādaśā is almost always partial: the cycle was already running and birth joins it.
- The Moon moves ~0.5° per hour, so an hour of birth-time error shifts the elapsed fraction ~4% of a nakshatra — months on a long period, and the shift carries through every later boundary.
- Check whether the Moon is near a nakshatra boundary before trusting the sequence. If it is, the starting lord itself may be wrong.
- Year-length conventions differ between software (365.25 vs 365.2422). Over 120 years the divergence is measurable. State period boundaries as months, not dates.
By now you should be able to
- Construct a full Viṁśottarī sequence from a birth nakshatra
- Compute the balance at birth by hand
- Explain why the first Mahādaśā is almost always partial
- Say how birth-time error propagates into the sequence