Yogini Dasha Calculation: Birth Balance, Eight Lords and Dated Antardashas

How is Yogini Dasha calculated?

Number the birth Moon's nakshatra from Ashvini = 1, add three, and take the remainder after division by eight. Remainders 1 through 7 select the first seven Yoginis; remainder zero selects Sankata. The fraction of the nakshatra still untraversed determines the remaining balance of that first major period.

For Antardashas, divide the complete major period in the eight-lord sequence, beginning with its own Yogini, in proportions of the subperiod years divided by 36. Then retain the part of that established timeline after birth. Restarting the subdivisions at birth gives a different answer when the major period has already begun.

Astrogyana's yogini-2026.2 profile uses 365.2425 days per model year and a 120-year reporting window. This guide explains its arithmetic. Traditional period names are not scientific probabilities, and a dated transition does not establish that a particular life event must occur.

The eight names, associated planets and lengths

The durations sum to 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 36 model years. After Sankata the order returns to Mangala. Starting partway through the cycle does not change the order; it only determines where the list begins and how much of its first period remains.

Notice the easily confused names: Mangala is the Moon's Yogini, while Bhramari is associated with Mars. Reading Mangala as the planet Mars would silently assign the wrong one-year period. Ketu has no separate period in this eight-member system; importing the nine Vimshottari lords changes the method.

The published Satyori description linked below gives the sequence and remainder rule also used by this application. The dated examples here are original calculations from the explicitly stated app conventions, rather than dates copied from a personal horoscope.

A complete lookup for all 27 nakshatras

Use a one-based nakshatra number. For Bharani, n = 2, so n + 3 = 5 and the starting Yogini is Bhadrika. For Mrigashirsha, n = 5, so the remainder is zero and the starting Yogini is Sankata, not an absent “zeroth” period.

A programmer storing the Yoginis in a zero-based array can use index = (n + 2) mod 8. This is the same rule in different indexing. Adding three and then treating the remainder as a zero-based array index shifts every result by one; the complete table makes that error visible.

Find the Moon's progress within its nakshatra

Each of the 27 equal nakshatras spans 13°20′, or 40/3 degrees. For normalized sidereal longitude λ in the interval 0° ≤ λ < 360°, the nakshatra start is (n − 1) × 40/3. Its elapsed fraction is f = [λ − (n − 1) × 40/3] / (40/3).

Use sidereal longitude with the selected ayanamsa. Tropical longitude is a different input. The ayanamsa comparison explains why different settings can change the Moon's position and occasionally its nakshatra. First agree on the coordinate input; changing the Dasha formula cannot repair a disagreement upstream.

Calculate with the available precision and round only the displayed value. Writing 13.333333° on a page is a shortened representation of 13°20′; it is not an instruction to replace the exact boundary by the truncated decimal. The application handles numerical round-off at equal-division boundaries separately from astronomical uncertainty.

The first balance is the unused fraction of the full period

If the selected Yogini lasts Y model years, elapsed time is fY and the balance is (1 − f)Y. In the current year convention, one model year is 31,556,952 seconds. A five-year Bhadrika period therefore lasts 157,784,760 seconds before any clipping.

A quarter of a nakshatra traversed leaves three quarters of the period; it does not select a new Yogini merely because the pada changes. The next nakshatra boundary is what changes the major-period selection rule. A displayed balance is a duration, so it should not be mistaken for a calendar age obtained by adding whole civil years.

A synthetic birth exactly halfway through Bharani

Take the artificial input birth = 2000-01-01 00:00:00 UTC and sidereal Moon longitude = 20°. No claim is made that the real Moon occupied that longitude at that instant. The pair is chosen to make the calculation transparent.

Bharani begins at 13°20′. The Moon is 6°40′ beyond that start, exactly half of 13°20′, so f = 0.5. Bharani selects Bhadrika, whose full duration is five model years. The elapsed amount and remaining balance are each 2.5 model years, or 78,892,380 seconds.

Subtracting the elapsed duration places the underlying complete Bhadrika period's start at 1997-07-01 21:27:00 UTC. Its full end is 2002-07-02 02:33:00 UTC. The application displays the first major period beginning at birth because the earlier portion is outside the requested report; that display boundary does not mean the underlying period started at birth.

Build the complete Antardasha timeline first

Within Bhadrika, the sequence is Bhadrika, Ulka, Siddha, Sankata, Mangala, Pingala, Dhanya and Bhramari. Their weights are 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3 and 4. Cumulative weights run 0, 5, 11, 18, 26, 27, 29, 32 and 36.

Each boundary is calculated from the same full-period start plus the rounded full duration multiplied by the cumulative weight divided by 36. This avoids accumulating separate rounding errors by repeatedly adding rounded lengths. In this particular example every listed boundary falls on an exact second.

The first three weights add to 18, exactly half of 36. Consequently, birth falls at the end of Siddha and the beginning of Sankata. The current subperiod at birth is therefore Sankata, although the major-period Yogini is Bhadrika.

Clip the original timeline at birth

The visible subperiods cover exactly 78,892,380 seconds, matching the major-period balance. The first visible Sankata subperiod lasts 35,063,280 seconds, or 405.825 model days. A subperiod ending exactly at birth is omitted; one starting exactly at birth is included.

Suppose instead the remaining 2.5 years were divided again from Bhadrika. That procedure would start with Bhadrika/Bhadrika and assign it 2.5 × 5/36 years. It would neither match the full timeline nor identify the correct Sankata subperiod. Clipping preserves the existing division; rescaling replaces it.

The same rule matters when birth lies inside a subperiod rather than on its boundary. The first visible row is then shorter than its original row, while the later boundaries remain in their original positions. Only the displayed start changes.

Boundary checks: lower edge included, upper edge excluded

The interval beginning at 13°20′ belongs to Bharani. The point just below it belongs to Ashvini. At 360°, normalize back to 0° before classification; do not introduce a twenty-eighth nakshatra. For valid inputs, longitude normalization changes representation without changing the point on the circle.

Time intervals use the same practical convention: start ≤ instant < end. This gives a transition instant to the new period and prevents two adjacent periods from being marked active simultaneously. It is particularly useful when checking dates to the second instead of reading only their calendar day.

Model years, UTC and local calendar dates

A 365.2425-day model year is a fixed duration. It is not a command to advance a calendar's year field. Our 2.5-year balance ends on 2 July 2002 at 02:33 UTC; simply adding two civil years and six calendar months to 1 January 2000 would produce a different instant.

The same end instant is 2002-07-02 08:03:00 in Asia/Kolkata. These labels differ because the latter adds the zone's 5-hour-30-minute offset at that instant. The application's period display uses the recorded birthplace timezone. The UTC tables here make cross-program comparisons independent of the viewer's current location.

If another program uses 360 days per Dasha year, the same 2.5 model-year balance becomes 900 days instead of 913.10625 days, a difference of 13.10625 days. Such a disagreement can come entirely from the year convention even when both programs agree on the Moon's longitude and the first Yogini.

A 120-year report contains repeating 36-year cycles

The current reporting window starts at birth and ends after 120 fixed model years. For the synthetic birth this is 2120-01-01 02:24:00 UTC. This is a software reporting boundary, not a lifespan calculation or a prediction about longevity.

A partial first major period is followed by successive complete periods, and the final period may be clipped at the report horizon. Its Antardashas are also clipped to that horizon. The last visible row therefore need not have the full duration printed in the eight-Yogini table.

Repeated names do not identify identical events. The same Yogini can recur on the timeline because the mathematical cycle repeats. Period arithmetic alone neither confirms a past event nor guarantees that a similar event will return.

Compare methods without mixing their denominators

The Vimshottari balance guide explains the parallel remaining-fraction idea. The Mahadasha and Antardasha guide explains parent periods and subdivisions. Similar vocabulary does not make the lord sequences, weights or denominators interchangeable.

When two Yogini reports disagree, compare the input instant and timezone, sidereal Moon longitude, nakshatra number, starting remainder, year length, full parent start and subdivision boundaries in that order. If the first three agree but dates drift, inspect the duration convention before debating interpretation.

In Kundli, look for Yogini under the period timeline and expand the major-period rows. Unknown birth time is treated differently by the app: an assumed noon position is not enough to present these Dasha timelines as precise. The Hindi calculation methodology records the implementation's scope and conventions.

Frequently asked questions