The 27 nakshatras: your birth star and what it decides

Ask a Kerala family about a newborn and one of the first questions is: which star? The birth star, or janma nakshatram, is the star the Moon was passing through at the moment of birth. It is used for naming, for temple offerings, for marriage matching, for muhurthams, and to start the timeline of dasa periods.

Twenty-seven stars around the sky

The Moon travels round the zodiac in about 27 days, so the sky is divided into 27 equal parts of 13°20′ each. Every star has four quarters called padas, and every rasi holds nine padas, which is two and a quarter stars. That is why some stars, like Karthika or Uthradam, belong partly to one rasi and partly to the next.

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Why the birth star decides your dasa

The Vimshottari dasa system divides a life of 120 years into nine planetary periods, always in the same order: Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury. Your first dasa is the one ruled by the lord of your birth star, and how far the Moon had already travelled through that star decides how much of it was left at birth. That remainder is the janma shishta dasa, the dasa balance printed on the first page of every report.

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