# How to read your kundli: lagna, rashi, nakshatra and dasha, in that order

Source: https://spolvero.design/articles/how-to-read-your-kundli/
Updated: 2026-10-16
Tool: https://spolvero.design/tools/astrology/kundli/

> To read a kundli, start with four things. The lagna is the sign that was rising in the east at your birth and sits in house 1; the rashi is the sign the Moon occupies; the janma nakshatra is the star the Moon was in, which also fixes the dasha; and the dasha is the planetary period running now, set by the Moon's exact degree at birth. Everything else in the chart is read from those four.

A janam kundali looks like a puzzle the first time: a diamond or a grid, numbers in the corners, two-letter abbreviations scattered through it. It is a map, and like a map it has a fixed way of being read. This guide goes through the four things a Jyotishi looks at first, in the order they look at them, using the [kundli maker](/tools/astrology/kundli/) to draw the chart from your own birth details.

## What the chart is

A kundli is the sky at the moment and place you were born, recorded in the sidereal zodiac — the twelve rashis, measured against the stars rather than the equinox. It shows where the nine grahas stood: the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, plus Rahu and Ketu, the two points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's. Each graha is in one rashi, and each rashi is one house counted from the lagna.

Two versions of the drawing are common. The **North Indian** chart keeps the houses fixed — house 1 is always the diamond at the top — and writes each house's rashi number inside it. The **South Indian** chart keeps the rashis fixed — Mesha is always the second box of the top row — and marks the lagna with a diagonal stroke. Both hold the same information; the tool draws either.

## 1. The lagna

The lagna, or ascendant, is the rashi that was rising in the east when you were born. It depends on the time and the place, because the eastern horizon sweeps through all twelve signs once a day: about two hours per sign. That is why a kundli needs the birth time, and why a time that is an hour out can change the lagna.

The lagna is house 1. Every other house is counted from it, so it fixes the whole frame: which rashi is your 7th house (partnership), your 10th (work), your 4th (home). Its lord — the graha that rules that rashi — is called the lagnesh, and where the lagnesh sits in the chart is one of the first things a reader checks.

Under the lagna the tool prints its exact degree. A lagna within a degree or two of a sign boundary is worth treating with care: a few minutes' difference in the recorded time would move it.

## 2. The rashi: your Moon sign

When someone in India asks your rashi, they mean the sign the Moon was in at your birth, not your Sun sign. The Moon changes rashi every two and a quarter days, so it is far more personal than the Sun, which sits in one sign for a month. The rashi is what a daily horoscope is read from, what compatibility matching starts from, and what a priest asks for when fixing a muhurta.

Find the Moon on the chart — "Mo", or चं in Hindi — and note the house it is in. The Moon in the 4th from the lagna, its own natural house, reads differently from the Moon in the 12th, and the tradition has a short reading for each.

## 3. The janma nakshatra

The sidereal zodiac is also divided into 27 nakshatras of 13°20′ each, and the one the Moon was in at birth is your janma nakshatra. Each is split into four padas, and the pada is what determines the first syllable traditionally used to name a child.

The nakshatra matters beyond naming. Its lord — the graha that rules it, in a fixed cycle of nine — is the lord of the first dasha of your life. Ashwini, Magha and Mula are ruled by Ketu; Bharani, Purva Phalguni and Purva Ashadha by Venus; and so on through the nine grahas in the Vimshottari order. The tool prints the nakshatra, its pada and its lord beside the Moon.

## 4. The dasha

Vimshottari dasha is the tradition's clock. Life is divided into planetary periods — mahadashas — that follow one another in a fixed order and fixed lengths adding up to 120 years: Ketu 7, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17. Your first mahadasha is ruled by the lord of your birth nakshatra, and it is shortened in proportion to how far the Moon had already travelled through that nakshatra when you were born. A Moon at the very start of Rohini gives a full 10-year Moon dasha from birth; a Moon at the end of it gives only months.

Each mahadasha is divided into nine antardashas in the same order, starting with the mahadasha lord itself. The tool lists every mahadasha from birth with dates, marks the one running now, and opens its antardashas so you can see which sub-period you are in.

Because the dasha depends on the Moon's exact degree, an unknown birth time makes the dates unreliable. The Moon moves about 13° a day, so a guessed noon can put the start of a period a year or more from where it belongs. The tool leaves the dasha out in that case rather than printing a wrong date.

## Reading the rest

With those four in hand, the rest of the chart is read house by house: which grahas occupy each house, which rashi it holds and where that rashi's lord has gone. The navamsa — the D9 chart drawn beside the main one — is read the same way and is decisive for marriage. Every calculation on the page is printed with its settings: Lahiri ayanamsa, whole-sign houses, mean node. If another site gives a different result, compare those three first. And if you want the placements read rather than listed, the [Jyotish app](/astro/) does that, with the rule and its source shown under every sentence.

## Questions

### What is the difference between lagna and rashi?

The lagna is the sign rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth and depends on the time and place; it is house 1 of the chart. The rashi, in everyday Indian usage, is the sign the Moon was in. Both are shown at the top of the kundli, and they are usually different signs.

### Which house is which in a North Indian chart?

House 1 is the diamond at the top centre, and the houses run anticlockwise: house 2 is the triangle to its upper left, house 4 the diamond on the left, house 7 the diamond at the bottom, house 10 the diamond on the right. The houses never move; the rashi numbers inside them rotate with the lagna.

### How do I know which dasha I am in?

The Vimshottari sequence starts from the lord of your birth nakshatra, and the first period is shortened by however far the Moon had already travelled through that nakshatra. The kundli tool lists every mahadasha from birth with its dates and marks the one running now, with its antardashas.

### What does (R) after a graha mean?

Retrograde: the planet appeared to be moving backwards through the zodiac at the time of birth. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can be retrograde; the Sun and Moon never are; Rahu and Ketu always are, by definition.