Dasha levels
How five Vimshottari levels nest
Each dasha period splits into nine, in the same order and proportions, down to periods of hours. Follow one branch from a 17-year period to a 21-hour one.
01 · Nine inside nine inside nine
Each period divides into nine, in the same order and the same proportions.
A major period splits into nine sub-periods, starting with its own lord and following the fixed order, each sized by its lord’s share of 120 years. Each of those splits the same way, down to the fifth level, where periods last hours.
The same rule at every level
The Vimshottari dasha is one rule applied repeatedly. A major period, the Mahadasha, divides into nine sub-periods, Antardashas. The first belongs to the major period’s own lord, and the rest follow in the fixed order, Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, wrapping round. Each sub-period is sized by its lord’s share of the 120-year cycle: Venus, with 20 years, gets 20/120 of the parent; the Sun, with 6, gets 6/120.
Each Antardasha divides the same way into nine Pratyantardashas, those into Sookshma periods and those into Prana periods. That makes five levels, the depth the site lists, and 9⁴ = 6,561 prana periods inside every major period.
One branch, followed down
In the fictional chart for 17:05 IST on 1 November 2026 in Delhi, Mercury’s major period runs from 10 April 2036 for 17 years. Following its first sub-period at each level:
| Level | Period | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Mahadasha | Mercury | 17 years |
| Antardasha | Mercury › Mercury | 2.4 years |
| Pratyantardasha | Mercury › Mercury › Mercury | 4.1 months |
| Sookshma | Mercury › Mercury › Mercury › Mercury | 17.7 days |
| Prana | Mercury › Mercury › Mercury › Mercury › Mercury | 2.5 days |
Inside that Sookshma the nine prana periods run from 21 hours (the Sun’s) to 2.9 days (Venus’s). Each level is 17/120 of the one above for Mercury, which is why the lengths shrink by about seven times at each step down this branch.
What the depth means
The finer levels inherit the uncertainty of the first. A birth-time error of a few minutes moves every date by days, as why dasha calculators disagree shows, which is more than the length of many prana periods. The site therefore fades periods whose timing the stated uncertainty leaves unsettled, as the Vimshottari guide describes.
See the five levels for any chart on the Kundli page, or explore another topic in Learn.