Chara Dasha Calculator

Chara dasha comes from the Jaimini Sutras. Where Vimshottari gives periods to planets, Chara dasha gives them to the twelve signs, starting from the sign of your ascendant. During a sign's period, the matters of that sign, the planets in it and the houses it rules come to the fore.

This calculator follows K.N. Rao's method. If your ascendant is an odd sign (Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius, Aquarius), the signs run forward through the zodiac; if it is even, they run backward.

Each sign's period is found by counting from the sign to the sign its lord occupies, in the same direction, and taking one less than the count, in years. A lord in its own sign gives the full 12 years. Scorpio and Aquarius take Ketu and Rahu as lord when the node occupies the sign. Because each span is worked out separately, the whole cycle can run anywhere from a few decades to over a century.

Each period divides into twelve equal sub-periods, starting from its own sign. Other lineages, such as Narayana dasha, count differently, so dates from another calculator may not match.

Planetary positions come from the Swiss Ephemeris, the reference used by professional astrology software, converted to the sidereal zodiac with the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsa, the standard in India and Nepal.

Your birth time is converted using the timezone history of your birthplace, including old offsets such as Nepal's +05:30 before 1986 and wartime clock changes. Getting that wrong shifts every position, and generic calculators often do. The chart is calculated in your browser: your birth date and time are never sent to us, and the place search sends only the town name you type.