Dasha Systems Revisited: Vimshottari and Yogini

The Founder Archives are Dr. Armaan Sharma's own papers, written for Astro River from 2008 and restored here in his words, with modern tools used for structure and editing.

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Abstract

This paper sets two planetary period systems side by side — the Vimshottari dasha, which is the default clock of Parashari practice, and the Yogini dasha, a shorter cycle drawn from the tantric side of the tradition — and asks under what conditions each sharpens a timed claim and under what conditions each misleads. Both systems are stated in full, with reference tables: their lords, their period lengths, how the opening period is found from the Moon's nakshatra, how sub-periods are cut, and what each yogini is traditionally said to give. The reading of Rahu and Ketu as period lords, and the choice of year-length on which every dasha date depends, are treated in their own sections. The comparison is framed, not scored. No aggregate accuracy figure is offered; under the method of Paper A such a figure, detached from claim-level records, means nothing. Instead the paper names the characteristic kinds of miss each system produces, sets rules for how a claim that rests on two clocks is recorded, sets out how a period lord is read and how the junctions between periods are handled, treats the place of the KP sub-lord and of Ashtakavarga in weighting a period, and works one invented chart through both systems to show where they agree and where they part. Other dasha systems are acknowledged and set aside, with reasons. Sources and a glossary follow.

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Why compare at all

There are more than forty dasha systems in the classical literature. Parashara himself gives many. A practitioner cannot run them all, and one who tries ends up choosing, after the event, whichever system happened to fit — which is not astrology but hindsight with a Sanskrit name.

So the honest question is not "which dasha is true?" It is: which system, applied to a stated claim with a stated window, gives a timing that a second reader can check — and what does each system tend to get wrong?

I use Vimshottari as the primary clock. I have used Yogini beside it as a check, and this paper is the account of what that check is good for. Two clocks are enough for an inspectable comparison. Five invite shopping.

Vimshottari

Vimshottari is the dasha Parashara treats as the principal one for the present age, and it is the one nearly every Indian astrologer learns first. Its name means "one hundred and twenty", the total span of the cycle in years.

The lords and their lengths. Nine lords, in a fixed order:

The nine sum to 120. The order is the order of the nakshatra lords around the zodiac: Ashwini is Ketu's, Bharani is Venus's, Krittika the Sun's, and so on through Revati, which is Mercury's, and then the sequence repeats. Each lord rules three of the twenty-seven nakshatras.

Finding the opening period. The first mahadasha is that of the lord of the nakshatra in which the Moon stands at birth. How much of that period remains is proportional to how much of the nakshatra the Moon has still to cross. A Moon at the very start of Rohini (which is the Moon's own nakshatra) gives the full ten years of Moon dasha; a Moon three-quarters through Rohini gives two and a half. This is the balance of the dasha, and everything after follows in order.

Sub-periods. Each mahadasha is divided into nine antardashas in the same order, beginning with the mahadasha lord itself. The length of an antardasha is the mahadasha length multiplied by the antardasha lord's own years and divided by 120. So within Jupiter's sixteen years, the Saturn antardasha runs 16 × 19 ÷ 120 = 2 years 6 months and 12 days. The same rule cuts an antardasha into pratyantardashas, and further if wanted.

The antardasha table. For reference, every sub-period length, in years, months of thirty days, and days:

Read across: the row is the mahadasha, the column the antardasha. The diagonal — a lord's own sub-period at the head of its own major period — is the one in which the period's character shows in concentrate.

What the system assumes. That the Moon's degree at birth is known — a two-hour error in birth time moves the Moon about a degree, and near a nakshatra boundary that changes the opening lord and shifts the whole life's sequence. That Lahiri or another stated ayanamsa is used consistently. And that the lord of a period is read not by its name alone but by what it does in the chart: which houses it rules, where it sits, what it aspects, what nakshatra it occupies and who that nakshatra's lord is. A Venus mahadasha for a Libra lagna and a Venus mahadasha for a Scorpio lagna are different periods.

Yogini

Yogini dasha is shorter and stranger. It comes from the tantric literature rather than from Parashara, and the periods are named not for planets but for eight yoginis — goddesses — each of whom has a planet assigned to her.

The yoginis, their planets and their lengths.

The eight sum to 36, so a full cycle is thirty-six years and a normal life contains two turns and part of a third. Ketu has no yogini of his own; some lines assign him a share of Sankata, and the paper follows the common practice of reading Sankata as Rahu's.

The names carry meaning. Dhanya is wealth, Bhadrika is auspicious, Siddha is accomplished; Ulka is the meteor, Sankata is trouble. The tradition treats Mangala, Dhanya, Bhadrika and Siddha as the benefic four and Pingala, Bhramari, Ulka and Sankata as the malefic four — but as with Vimshottari, the name is a starting point, and the planet's condition in the chart decides.

What each yogini is said to give. The tradition attaches a character to each, and it is worth setting down, provided the reader remembers that the chart overrides the name.

• Mangala (Moon, 1 year) — comfort, the favour of women and of the mother, gain through the public; short, and often a settling year.
• Pingala (Sun, 2 years) — authority and its costs: recognition from superiors, quarrels with them, matters of the father, heat in the body.
• Dhanya (Jupiter, 3 years) — the fortunate one: wealth, learning, children, the respect of the wise; the best of the eight when Jupiter is sound.
• Bhramari (Mars, 4 years) — the wanderer: travel, change of residence, restlessness, disputes, surgery; energy without a fixed address.
• Bhadrika (Mercury, 5 years) — the auspicious one: trade, speech, writing, examinations, friendship; gain through intelligence.
• Ulka (Saturn, 6 years) — the meteor: loss, delay, separation, illness of a chronic kind, hard labour; the period that teaches endurance.
• Siddha (Venus, 7 years) — the accomplished one: marriage, pleasure, vehicles, art, the fulfilment of a long wish; the period most clients hope they are in.
• Sankata (Rahu, 8 years) — trouble: fear, foreign matters, sudden reversal, obsession, illness hard to name; also the longest, and in a chart with a good Rahu the period of the strangest gains.

The benefic four and the malefic four alternate through the cycle, which is why a Yogini timeline reads like weather — rarely more than a few years of one kind before the other returns.

Finding the opening period. Count the Moon's nakshatra from Ashwini as 1. Add 3. Divide by 8 and take the remainder: 1 is Mangala, 2 Pingala, and so on to 7 Siddha, with a remainder of 0 being Sankata. The balance is proportional to the part of the nakshatra still to be crossed, exactly as in Vimshottari.

So a Moon in Rohini, the fourth nakshatra: 4 + 3 = 7, and 7 leaves a remainder of 7 — Siddha, ruled by Venus. A Moon in Ashlesha, the ninth: 9 + 3 = 12, remainder 4 — Bhramari, ruled by Mars.

Sub-periods. Each yogini period is divided into eight sub-periods in the same order, beginning with itself, and the length of a sub-period is the main period multiplied by the sub-yogini's years and divided by 36. Within Sankata's eight years, the Ulka sub-period runs 8 × 6 ÷ 36 = 1 year 4 months.

The sub-period table. Every yogini sub-period, on the same basis:

What the system assumes. The same dependence on the Moon's degree. But because the periods are short, an error at the nakshatra boundary looks different: in Vimshottari it offsets the whole life, in Yogini it misplaces a year or two and then the cycle re-aligns. This is a real difference and it matters for what each clock is good for.

What is being compared

Following Paper A (Paper A, First Principles), the unit is a claim: one native, one statement, one window. A claim may rest on Vimshottari, on Yogini, or on both. The book records which.

Three rules govern a claim that cites both clocks:

1. Say which is primary. In my practice Vimshottari is primary and Yogini is the check. A claim's window is set by the primary clock; the check clock is noted as agreeing, disagreeing, or silent.
2. The check must be consulted before the outcome is known. A Yogini agreement found afterward is not evidence; it is an alibi.
3. One event, one entry. A marriage that falls in a Venus antardasha and in a Siddha period is one hit, not two.

Claims that cite a period lord's natural meaning without a window — "Venus dasha brings marriage" — are not timing claims and cannot decide between systems. They belong in Paper A's tally of untimed fact-claims.

→ Paper A, First Principles

Conditions of use

Neither system corrects bad data, and neither is a warranty. Each is recommended under conditions.

Vimshottari for the long arc. Where the claim concerns a durable configuration — the block of years in which education is completed, the phase of a career, the theme of a marriage — Vimshottari's length is a virtue. Mahadasha and antardasha carry different weights, and a careful claim can say "the theme of the major period" and "the trigger in the sub-period" as two different things. It is the clock for the shape of a life.

Yogini for the short and the recurrent. Where the claim concerns an interval measured in months — a crisis, a recovery, a window for a move — a Vimshottari mahadasha is too broad to say much and its antardasha may still be years wide. Yogini's periods of one to eight years, and sub-periods of a few months, give a second clock that does not merely echo the first. And because the cycle turns more than once in a life, a yogini returning under a different Vimshottari lord is a structured prompt: is the old theme back, and in what dress?

Both need the chart. A yogini's planet is read by its condition in the birth chart exactly as a Vimshottari lord is. Siddha for a chart whose Venus is combust in the twelfth is not "accomplished". Sankata for a chart whose Rahu sits well in the eleventh with Jupiter's aspect is not "trouble". The names are the tradition's shorthand; the chart is the text.

The characteristic misses

Every timing system fails in its own way, and the failures are more instructive than the successes because they isolate the apparatus. These are the kinds of miss I have learned to watch for. They are named for teaching, not tallied.

Wrong-period emphasis. The domain reading is sound; the weighting between levels is not. In Vimshottari the common form is crediting the mahadasha lord with what the antardasha delivered, or the reverse. In Yogini the common form is the opposite error of scale: a short yogini is made to explain a long outcome that belongs to a Vimshottari arc. A four-year Bhramari cannot be the reason for a career that took twenty years to build.

The over-narrow window. In Vimshottari, treating an antardasha as a sharp deadline rather than as a bounded interval inside which the onset, the decision and the public recognition may fall at different points. In Yogini the hazard is worse, because the short sub-periods invite a precision — "the third week of Mangala" — that birth-time uncertainty and the lag between an event and its definition cannot support. A period of a year cut into eight sub-periods gives sub-periods of weeks; no one's birth time is good to weeks.

Signification mistaken for event. Venus period, therefore marriage. Sankata, therefore trouble. Ulka, therefore loss. These are colour, not claims. Under Paper A's codes they land as A or as untimed fact-claims. Both systems produce this miss; Yogini produces it more, because its names are more vivid and it is easier to read the name than the chart.

The retrospective patch. A Vimshottari miss "explained" by a Yogini period found afterward. This is the one that corrupts a file, because it feels like scholarship. The rule above — consult the check before, not after — exists to stop it.

Data-quality doubt. A miss that traces to the Moon's degree. The two systems fail differently here, as said: Vimshottari's failure is an offset that persists, Yogini's is a misplacement that heals. When a chart shows a persistent Vimshottari drift with a Yogini that keeps landing, the birth time is the first suspect.

When the two clocks part

Divergence is not scandal; it is information. Four things follow from it.

Agreement is informative only when the claims were independent. If one window was adjusted to match the other, agreement is not evidence of anything.

O under one and M under the other isolates the clock. When the event happened but only one system had it in its window, the domain reading was right and one timing apparatus was wrong. That pairing is the most useful thing a two-clock file produces, and it is only visible if the codes for occurrence and timing are kept apart.

Untimed agreement tests nothing. If both systems point to Venus for a marriage but neither gave a window, no comparison has been made.

Primary–secondary discipline keeps the file clean. A practitioner who treats both clocks as equal oracles for every claim will always find one that fits. A practitioner who names the primary in advance can be wrong, and therefore can learn.

A worked example

The chart below is invented for teaching. It is nobody's horoscope.

Given. Moon at 20°00′ Taurus, Lahiri — that is, 10°00′ into Rohini, which spans 10°00′ to 23°20′ Taurus. Three-quarters of the nakshatra has been crossed; one quarter remains. Birth in year 0 for simplicity.

Vimshottari. Rohini is the Moon's nakshatra, so the opening mahadasha is the Moon's. Balance: one quarter of ten years, 2 years 6 months. Then:

• Moon: 0 to 2½
• Mars: 2½ to 9½
• Rahu: 9½ to 27½
• Jupiter: 27½ to 43½
• Saturn: 43½ to 62½
• Mercury: 62½ to 79½

Yogini. Rohini is nakshatra 4. 4 + 3 = 7; remainder 7 is Siddha, Venus. Balance: one quarter of seven years, 1 year 9 months. Then the sequence runs Sankata, Mangala, Pingala, Dhanya, Bhramari, Bhadrika, Ulka, and repeats:

• Siddha: 0 to 1¾
• Sankata: 1¾ to 9¾
• Mangala: 9¾ to 10¾
• Pingala: 10¾ to 12¾
• Dhanya: 12¾ to 15¾
• Bhramari: 15¾ to 19¾
• Bhadrika: 19¾ to 24¾
• Ulka: 24¾ to 30¾
• Siddha: 30¾ to 37¾
• Sankata: 37¾ to 45¾
• Mangala: 45¾ to 46¾
• Pingala: 46¾ to 48¾

Where they agree. From 2½ to 9½ Vimshottari gives Mars and Yogini gives Sankata, Rahu. Both are malefic lords over the same childhood years; if the chart's Mars and Rahu are afflicted, both clocks say the same thing about that stretch. From 43½ Vimshottari gives Saturn; Yogini gives Sankata again from 37¾ to 45¾. The overlap is partial, and the tone is similar.

Where they part. Consider a marriage claim. Suppose the seventh lord is Jupiter and Venus is well placed. Vimshottari gives Jupiter mahadasha from 27½. Its antardashas run in order — Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, then Venus — and the Venus antardasha, 16 × 20 ÷ 120 = 2 years 8 months long, falls at about 35⅓ to 38. Yogini gives Siddha, Venus, from 30¾ to 37¾. Both clocks light Venus for the years 35⅓ to 37¾, and a claim windowed to the Venus antardasha of Jupiter — 35⅓ to 38 — would be primary on Vimshottari with Yogini agreeing for most of it. If the marriage came at 36, both are H. If it came at 32, Vimshottari is M and Yogini is H — the domain was right and the primary clock missed by three years, while the check had it. If it came at 34, both miss, and the reader looks first at Jupiter's own antardasha and at the birth time.

Now consider a career claim at 24. Vimshottari has Rahu mahadasha, with an antardasha to be worked; Yogini has Bhadrika, Mercury, turning to Ulka, Saturn, at 24¾. If the tenth lord is Mercury, Yogini says the good stretch is ending and the Saturn stretch beginning; Vimshottari says something about Rahu and whichever antardasha lord is running. These are not the same statement. A claim made here must say which clock it rests on, and the reader will learn from which one was right.

A second example — a miss. Same invented chart. Suppose that at 24 the claim made was: "Change of residence to another country during Bhadrika, before 24¾; Vimshottari Rahu–Venus, which runs to 24, and Rahu–Sun after it, agree." The basis named Mercury, the yogini's planet, as tenth lord in the twelfth — work abroad; Venus as fourth lord, the home, running as antardasha lord; Rahu in the ninth; and a strong twelfth-house bindu count. The window closed with no move. Outcome N under both clocks. Follow-up two years later showed the native applied abroad in the last month of Bhadrika and left at 26, in Ulka and in Rahu–Moon. Under the rules this is N with a note, not P, because the claim said "change of residence", not "application". The reader sees that both clocks lit the same theme too early — a wrong-period emphasis — and that the event fell instead at the Bhadrika–Ulka sandhi in one clock and, in the other, in an antardasha the claim had not named at all, the Moon's, which no one had looked at because the Moon is not a foreign-travel planet by reputation. Both facts stay in the note. That is the kind of pairing the book exists to make visible.

What the example shows. Two clocks set from the same Moon give different periods, sometimes agreeing in tone and sometimes not. Neither is "the answer". The discipline is to name the primary, record the check, and let the outcome teach.

Reading a period lord

A dasha is a name until the chart is consulted. Before a claim is windowed to a period, these are the things that decide what the period can give. They apply to a Vimshottari lord and to a yogini's planet alike.

Lordship. Which houses the planet rules from this lagna. A lord of the ninth and tenth is a different thing from a lord of the sixth and eleventh, whatever its natural character.

Placement. The house it occupies, and the house counted from the Moon. A period lord in a kendra or trikona from both works differently from one in the eighth from the lagna and the twelfth from the Moon.

Nakshatra and its lord. The planet's star-lord colours everything the period delivers. Paper C, Nakshatras A Saturn in Pushya, whose lord is Saturn, is Saturn twice over; a Saturn in Punarvasu, whose lord is Jupiter, is softened. In KP this is the first thing looked at and it settles much.

Dignity, combustion, retrogression. Exalted, in own sign, debilitated; within combustion orb of the Sun; retrograde. Each changes what the lord can do and how directly.

Aspects received and given. Jupiter's aspect on a period lord lifts what the period can deliver; Saturn's delays it; Mars's makes it abrupt.

The relation between the two lords. In Vimshottari, the antardasha lord is read against the mahadasha lord. Natural friends give easily; natural enemies give with friction. The two lords in mutual sixth-and-eighth or second-and-twelfth positions from each other produce the periods that clients describe as "nothing went right", however good each planet is on its own. The antardasha of the mahadasha lord itself — the opening one — often shows the period's character in concentrate.

Bindus. As in the section above: the lord's own points in its sign, and the total of the houses it rules.

Only after this is a window set. A claim that names a period without naming these things has named a calendar, not an astrology.

Dasha sandhi

The junctions between periods deserve a section of their own, because they are where a great many claims are lost.

Sandhi is the joint: the last stretch of one period and the first of the next. The tradition treats these months as unsettled — the outgoing lord's business unfinished, the incoming lord's not yet begun — and the sandhi between two mahadashas especially so, since it is the change of the life's whole tone. The sandhi between Rahu and Jupiter, and between Jupiter and Saturn, and above all between Mars and Rahu, are the ones practitioners learn to watch: they fall in most lives and they are often marked by illness, loss or upheaval before the new period settles.

For the book — the Astro River record of claims, kept as Paper A sets out — sandhi raises a practical rule. A claim windowed to a period should say whether it includes the sandhi at either end. An event that falls in the last month of the outgoing period and belongs, by its nature, to the incoming lord is the commonest source of a P code, and the honest thing is to have said in advance how the boundary will be treated. My practice is to treat the sandhi as belonging to the incoming period for events that begin, and to the outgoing period for events that conclude — and to say so in the claim.

Yogini, with its short periods, has more sandhis and each is less consequential; the joints between yoginis are read as changes of weather rather than of climate. But a sandhi in both clocks at once — the end of a Vimshottari mahadasha falling within months of the end of a yogini — is a stretch I treat with care, and would window no claim into without saying so.

Rahu and Ketu as period lords

Together Rahu and Ketu hold twenty-five of Vimshottari's hundred and twenty years, and they rule no sign. So the first question in any Rahu or Ketu period is: on whose behalf is this node acting?

The classical answer has three parts, and they are applied in order.

The lord of the sign it occupies. A node gives, first, the results of the planet that owns the sign it sits in. Rahu in Sagittarius acts largely as Jupiter would from that place; Ketu in Scorpio, largely as Mars. This is the base reading.

Planets conjoined with or aspecting it. A planet sitting with a node, or throwing its aspect on it, lends the node its agenda. Rahu with Venus in the seventh gives a Rahu period that is about partnership, for good or ill; Rahu with Saturn gives one that is about labour and delay. Where a node is alone and unaspected, the sign lord carries the whole weight.

The house it occupies. The node's own placement gives the arena. Rahu in the tenth makes its period a period of career, whatever its dispositor is doing.

Beyond this, the nodes carry their own character. Rahu magnifies, obsesses, and brings the foreign and the unconventional; a Rahu period is rarely quiet and often marks the life's largest single ambition. Ketu withdraws, spiritualises, and takes away what it earlier gave; a Ketu period is short and frequently ends something. The Rahu mahadasha of eighteen years is, with Venus's twenty and Saturn's nineteen, one of the three long stretches of the cycle, and its antardashas — especially those of Saturn and Mars — are the ones most often named in the book's notes.

For the record, a claim windowed to a nodal period must name the dispositor and the conjunctions in its interpretive basis. "Rahu dasha, therefore upheaval" is a signification, not a claim.

In Yogini the same question arises for Sankata. Its planet is Rahu, and the same three-part reading applies. Ketu, having no yogini, shows in Yogini only through his conjunctions and the sign he occupies, when the yogini of that sign's lord is running.

The length of the year

A dasha is measured in years, and the tradition does not agree on how long a year is. Three conventions are in use: the savana year of 360 days, the solar or saura year of about 365.25 days, and the chandra or lunar year of about 354 days. Most software offers the first two. The difference is a little over five days a year — nothing at the start of life, but by the age of fifty it has moved every dasha boundary by some nine months, and a claim that was H under one convention can be M under the other.

I work from the solar year of 365.25 days, which is the common practice in the north Indian line and the default in most modern calculation. This paper does not argue that it is correct in principle; the texts can be read either way. What the book requires is that the convention be stated on every entry, exactly as the ayanamsa is, so that no claim is checked against a clock it was not made on. A reader who uses the savana year can convert; a reader who does not know which year was used cannot check anything.

The same applies, with smaller effect, to whether the period is counted from the moment of birth or from the following sunrise, and to the precise boundary of the Moon's nakshatra. These are recorded once, in the chart's basis, and not revisited.

KP and the sub-lord

The Krishnamurti method does not use a different dasha; it uses Vimshottari, and it uses it more finely. Where Parashari reads the mahadasha and antardasha lords by house and sign, KP asks in addition what each lord signifies through the nakshatra it occupies and the sub-division of that nakshatra — the sub-lord — and whether the running dasha lords are connected to the cusps that govern the matter asked about.

For timing this means KP does not so much replace Vimshottari as tighten its readings. A Venus antardasha "brings marriage" in Parashari if Venus is seventh lord or karaka in good condition. In KP the question is whether Venus, by its star-lord and sub-lord, signifies the second, seventh and eleventh cusps; if it does not, the period passes without the event however nice Venus looks in the sign. This is one of the main reasons I reach for KP when a client wants a yes or a no: it makes the same clock say less, and what it says is harder to wriggle out of.

Yogini has no established sub-lord apparatus and I do not invent one. It stays a check.

Ashtakavarga and the weight of a period

A dasha lord's promise is one thing; the ground it walks on is another. Ashtakavarga supplies the ground.

→ Ashtakavarga

Two uses in period work. First, the dasha lord's own bindus in the sign it occupies, and the total of the house it rules, say how much the period can deliver. A Jupiter mahadasha with Jupiter in a sign carrying 5 or more of its own bindus, ruling a house with 30 or more in the Sarvashtakavarga, has room to give. The same Jupiter on 2 bindus, over a house at 22, will promise and not pay. Second, the transits that trigger a period's events — Saturn and Jupiter above all — are read through the bindus of the signs they cross. A period is said to fructify when its lord's promise, the transiting trigger and the ground all agree; when one is missing the claim should be windowed wider or hedged, and the book should say so in the basis.

This applies to a yogini's planet as it applies to a Vimshottari lord. Siddha over a Venus on strong ground is a different period from Siddha over a Venus on weak ground, and the bindus are the quickest way to see which.

The other systems

Parashara gives Ashtottari, of 108 years, for charts where Rahu falls in certain positions from the lagna lord; Kalachakra, of great complexity; and the conditional dashas — Dwisaptati, Shodashottari, Chaturasiti and others — each triggered by a condition in the chart. Jaimini gives Chara dasha and its relations, which are sign-based rather than planet-based and are treated in Paper D. Paper D, Jaimini Some modern lines favour Chara for its clarity on career.

I do not compare these here for the reason given at the start: one check clock keeps the file inspectable. A later paper may take Chara as the sole alternate under the same rules. What I will say is that a practitioner who runs six dashas on every chart and reports whichever fit is not doing more astrology than one who runs two; he is doing less, because he has removed the possibility of being wrong.

Limits

One alternate only. Restricting the check to Yogini leaves much unsaid. That is a choice of method, not a judgment on the other systems.

No causal warrant. Nothing here says that periods cause events, or that either clock has been proved. The paper says how two clocks may be compared without self-deception.

The Moon's degree. Both systems inherit it, and any comparison that ignores birth-time quality overstates their independence. Paper A's strata apply.

Definition and lag. Marriage, office, illness are not fixed observables; a timing miss is sometimes a definition miss. The note in the book records which.

Recensions. Yogini has regional variants — in the treatment of Ketu, in some sub-period conventions. This paper follows one common usage and does not settle the textual questions.

Closing

Vimshottari and Yogini answer the same need by different means. The first is the long clock, taught here as primary for the shape of a life when claims are well specified. The second is the short clock, used as a check for intervals that a mahadasha cannot resolve. Each fails in recognisable ways — wrong level, over-narrow window, name mistaken for event, patch after the fact — and naming those failures, claim by claim, teaches more than any percentage could.

The rule inherited from Paper A holds: freeze the claim, name the clock and the window, score occurrence and timing apart, keep ambiguity visible, and never let one clock rescue the other after the fact. On that discipline two dashas can be run together without myth.

Pages that hang from this paper

• Vimshottari dasha: the calculation, with the antardasha table, as a page of its own.
• Yogini dasha: the calculation and the eight yoginis.
• Rahu and Ketu as period lords.
• Dasha sandhi: the junctions.
• The length of the dasha year.
• The conditional dashas: Ashtottari, Kalachakra and the rest, one page each.
• The sub-lord in KP.
• Ashtakavarga in period work.
• Papers A, C and D of this series.

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Sources

Vimshottari as stated here is that of the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, dasha chapters, as received in the north Indian teaching line — the nine lords in nakshatra order, the 120-year total, the balance from the Moon's nakshatra, and nested sub-periods in proportion. The conditional dashas named in passing are from the same text. The sub-lord method is that of K. S. Krishnamurti in the Krishnamurti Padhdhati readers. Yogini dasha is given in the tantric and later compilatory literature and is summarised, with the standard yogini–planet assignments and the nakshatra + 3 rule, in the usual modern manuals; the paper follows that common form and does not adjudicate variants. Chara dasha is from Jaimini's Upadesa Sutras and is treated in Paper D. Ashtakavarga is from Parashara and from Varahamihira's Brihat Jataka, as in Paper A.

No modern study, no dataset and no accuracy figure is cited, because none is advanced.

Glossary

Antardasha — sub-period within a mahadasha. Ashtottari — a 108-year conditional dasha. Balance — the portion of the opening dasha remaining at birth. Bindu — a benefic point in Ashtakavarga. Chara dasha — Jaimini's sign-based dasha. Fructify — of a dasha, to deliver its promise in events. Kalachakra — a complex nakshatra-based dasha given by Parashara. Mahadasha — a major period. Pratyantardasha — the sub-period within an antardasha. Sandhi — the junction between two dasha periods. Savana year — a year of 360 days; saura — the solar year of about 365.25 days. Dispositor — the lord of the sign a planet or node occupies. Sarvashtakavarga — the summed Ashtakavarga grid. Star-lord — in KP, the lord of the nakshatra a planet occupies. Sub-lord — in KP, the lord of the sub-division of that nakshatra. Vimshottari — the 120-year dasha. Yogini — one of the eight goddesses of the Yogini dasha; also the dasha itself.