What it means
The Vimshottari system is the one in general use: nine planets are assigned fixed spans totalling 120 years - Ketu 7, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17 - run in that fixed order. Which one you are born into is set by the nakshatra your Moon occupied at birth.
How it is read
The running dasha is what turns a static chart into a timeline. A planet that is strong but whose period never arrives does comparatively little; a difficult planet whose Mahadasha runs for nineteen years shapes a substantial part of a life.
What to watch for
Each Mahadasha subdivides into Antardashas in the same proportion and order, and those subdivide again. This is the mechanism behind most date-specific Vedic predictions - and its precision is only as good as the birth time, since the Moon's nakshatra sets the starting point.
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