Ashtottari Dasha: 108-Year Nakshatra Table and Calculation

Ashtottari Dasha Kya Hai (अष्टोत्तरी दशा)

Ashtottari takes its name from the number one hundred and eight, and 108 years is the length of one complete round of its periods. Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra sets it out as one of several nakshatra dashas, and the later dasha manuals repeat the same lords and years. Where the better-known Vimshottari dasha has nine lords over 120 years, Ashtottari has eight lords over 108, a round 12 years shorter. The lord left out is Ketu, which carries no Ashtottari period at all. Both systems take the Moon’s nakshatra at birth as the point of entry, but they hand the nakshatras out to their lords in different ways, so in 24 of the 27 janma nakshatras the two sequences open under different grahas.

When the Texts Apply It: Two Different Rules

Ashtottari is not presented in the sources as a replacement for Vimshottari in every chart. Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra names a condition: Rahu placed in a kendra or a trikona counted from the lagna lord, but not in the lagna itself. A later rule, common in popular manuals, uses the time of birth and the lunar fortnight instead, taking Ashtottari for a daytime birth in Krishna paksha or a night-time birth in Shukla paksha. These are separate tests that look at different things, one at a graha’s position and one at the hour and the phase of the Moon, and a given chart can pass one while failing the other. This page reports both and does not rule on which a practitioner should follow.

The Eight Lords, Their Years and Their Nakshatra Groups

The assignment of nakshatras does not start at Ashwini. It begins at Ardra, the 6th nakshatra, and counts 28 of them rather than 27, because Abhijit is taken in as an extra nakshatra between Uttara Ashadha and Shravana. The 28 slots are then dealt to the lords in running order, four and three alternately.

The Sun, Mars, Saturn and Rahu each hold four nakshatras; the Moon, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus each hold three. Because the count starts at Ardra, the Rahu group runs across the end of the zodiac, from Uttara Bhadrapada and Revati over into Ashwini and Bharani, and the last group, Venus’s, finishes at Mrigashira, the nakshatra just before Ardra. The share column divides each lord’s years evenly across its group on the 360-day year; every share it prints is a whole number of days.

Abhijit, the 28th Nakshatra

The 27 nakshatras this site works with, each 13°20′ wide, do not include Abhijit, and the nakshatra tables in its data have no row for it. Ashtottari needs it only to make the Saturn group four long. The manuals do not agree on how Abhijit’s arc is carved out of Uttara Ashadha and Shravana, so this page gives Abhijit no degrees, prints no per-nakshatra share for Saturn, and lists Abhijit in the group table only so the count of Saturn’s four comes out right. A Moon in Uttara Ashadha or Shravana is exactly where that choice changes the balance at birth, and for that reason the worked example below uses neither.

All 27 Nakshatras: Ashtottari Lord Beside the Vimshottari Lord

Read the row for the janma nakshatra; the nakshatra finder gives it from a birth date, time and place. The “place in group” column matters for the balance, as the worked example shows.

Across the 27 rows no combination of Ashtottari lord and Vimshottari lord turns up twice. The same graha opens both sequences in three rows only: Chitra (Mars), Jyeshtha (Mercury) and Purva Bhadrapada (Jupiter). Full periods of equal length open both sequences in two rows: Jyeshtha, where Mercury has 17 years in both, and Shravana, where Saturn’s 10 in Ashtottari stand against the Moon’s 10 in Vimshottari. Of the other 25, the Ashtottari lord has the longer full period in twelve and the shorter in thirteen. The three nakshatras that open in Ketu under Vimshottari open instead in Rahu (Ashwini), the Moon (Magha) and Mercury (Mula).

Ashtottari Dasha Calculation: The Balance at Birth

Here the two systems part company in method, not only in numbers. Vimshottari gives each nakshatra its lord’s full period, so the unfinished share is simply the uncrossed fraction of the one nakshatra. In Ashtottari a lord’s years cover its whole group. One common implementation, and the one used here, splits the years evenly across the group’s nakshatras, counts as elapsed every group nakshatra the Moon has already passed plus the crossed part of the one it is in, and takes the remainder as the balance. The example uses a hypothetical Moon at Libra 10°00′, a figure picked for clean arithmetic and not taken from anyone’s chart. That is 190° sidereal, inside Swati, which begins at Libra 6°40′.

• Swati is the 3rd of the four in Mars’s group (Hasta, Chitra, Swati and Vishakha), so the opening lord is Mars, with 8 years for the group.
• Share per nakshatra: 8 ÷ 4 = 2 years.
• Already passed in the group: Hasta and Chitra, two full shares, 4 years.
• Crossed inside Swati: 10°00′ minus 6°40′ = 3°20′, which is 0.25 of 13°20′; 0.25 × 2 = 0.5 of a year.
• Elapsed: 4 + 0.5 = 4.5 years. Balance of Mars: 8 − 4.5 = 3 years 6 months.

Had the proportion been taken over Swati alone, in the Vimshottari manner, the figure would have been 0.75 × 8 = 6 years, which is why the group rule matters. For the same Moon, Vimshottari opens in Rahu with 13 years 6 months left of 18 years. After Mars’s balance the Ashtottari count moves on in order to Mercury’s full 17 years and then Saturn’s 10 years. Under this rule each degree the Moon has moved through Swati takes 1 month 24 days off the Mars balance, so the result leans on an accurate Moon degree, which depends on the birth time.

Antardashas: The Sun Mahadasha Divided

Each mahadasha splits into eight antardashas, starting with its own lord and following the running order. The length of one is the mahadasha’s years multiplied by the antardasha lord’s years, over 108. For the Sun’s 6 years, that gives 20 days on the classical 360-day year for every year the antardasha lord carries:

The column of days adds back to 6 years. Whole days for every antardasha are a property of only four mahadashas, those of the Sun, the Moon, Rahu and Venus, whose years divide by three. In the Mars, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter mahadashas a sub-period lands on a whole day only when the antardasha lord’s years divide by three; otherwise a third or two thirds of a day is left over, as in Mars–Mars, 8 × 8 / 108 of a year, or 213⅓ days. Calculators that count on the 365.2425-day solar year print somewhat longer calendar spans for the same proportions.

What This Page Does Not Say

Nothing here describes what an Ashtottari mahadasha or antardasha brings, ranks one lord’s period above another’s, or suggests anything to do during one. In Parashari practice a period is judged from the houses its lord rules and occupies, the aspects it receives and the chart as a whole, and an arithmetic table holds none of that. The page puts no period on a calendar and turns none into an age. It does not decide which of the two applicability rules a chart should be tested by, and it gives no arc for Abhijit. For the Vimshottari lords one by one, see the dasha hub; the Yogini dasha page sets out a third nakshatra dasha in the same table format. In Hindi: अष्टोत्तरी दशा: 108 वर्षों की नक्षत्र तालिका और गणना.