Ashlesha Nakshatra: the serpent star that closes Cancer, Gandanta, Mercury dasha and the texts

Ashlesha is the ninth nakshatra and closes the first cycle of nine: Cancer 16 degrees 40 minutes to Cancer 30 degrees. Its end is the end of a sign and of a nakshatra at once, one of the three Gandanta seams in the zodiac. Its Vimshottari lord is Mercury, its deity the serpent, and it holds the point of Mars's deepest fall. If your Moon was in Ashlesha at birth, it sets the 17-year Mercury Mahadasha your life began in, your Cat yoni, Rakshasa gana and Antya nadi, and your Moon's sub-lord. The nakshatra calculator shows yours.

This page sets out what the corpus books say about Ashlesha, by chapter, sloka or page, beside what the engine computes: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (BPHS), Kalyana Varma's Saravali, Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara and Advanced Predictive Astrology, all on the sources page. Several classical passages about Ashlesha are harsh, and the page says plainly what it reports and what it declines to repeat. For Moon sign and nakshatra in general see Moon sign and nakshatra; for the sign, Cancer, Karka Rashi.

Where Ashlesha sits, and the deepest fall of Mars

Eight nakshatras of 13 degrees 20 minutes reach Cancer 16 degrees 40 minutes, and Ashlesha runs from there to the end of the sign (Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara, Ch. II, pp. 22-23, for the arithmetic). All four padas are in Cancer, the Moon's sign. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50 puts Mars's debilitation in Cancer with the deepest point at 28 degrees, which is in Ashlesha's fourth pada, and keeps Jupiter exalted throughout Cancer, though past its peak at 5 degrees.

Cancer is movable, so the engine counts its navamsas from Cancer itself, and Ashlesha's padas are Cancer's 6th to 9th navamsas, Sagittarius to Pisces. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 87-88 agrees: eight nakshatras have passed, 8 divided by 3 leaves 2, times 4 is 8, plus the pada gives the 9th to 12th signs from Mesh. None is Cancer, so no graha in Ashlesha is Vargottama. See the Navamsa (D9) calculator.

The serpent, the wheel and six stars

BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names the ninth nakshatra deity Ahi, the serpent. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 97) gives the presiding deity as a Serpent, adding "(Rahu)", and describes Aaslesha as six stars like a discus or wheel. The Saptavimshamsa (D27) calculator uses the BPHS list.

The entry gives Ashlesha's sex as female, its tatthwa as Jala (water), its region as the South-east and its body part as the ears, and says it is represented by serpents, water creatures and reptiles; the direction table (p. 90) and body-part table (p. 91) agree. It names a caste, which is not carried over. The "(Rahu)" in the deity line should not be confused with the nakshatra's lord: in the Vimshottari scheme Rahu rules Ardra, Swati and Shatabhisha, and Ashlesha belongs to Mercury; the book is naming the serpent deity, not reassigning the dasha. Its occupation line begins with those who practise medicine and a fondness for fruits and perfumes, and also includes a moral charge that is not repeated here.

How Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classifies Ashlesha

Ashlesha collects more of the book's cautionary labels than any nakshatra before it: Gandantha, Laya with durithamsa padas, downward-looking and hot. The book ties only the nature label to timing (p. 91): during the period of a planet situated in a particular star, effects will be felt according to its characteristics. It says the body-part table, here the ears, helps locate disease when read with the 6th lord; that is its claim, not medical advice. This app uses none of these labels. The yoga list (pp. 28-29) adds that the second yoga, Preethi, begins at Aslesha, which places the yoga on the zodiac and says nothing about people.

What the texts say about a person born in Ashlesha, and what the app does with it

Both of Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's descriptions of Ashlesha are severe. The prose (p. 98) and the translated sloka are lists of moral verdicts, of the kind this page does not repeat as a reading of anyone. Read for temperament rather than morals, the sloka's milder content is restlessness (it speaks of wandering about aimlessly), arrogance and self-will. As for every entry, the book says the effects come fully only if the Moon is powerful (p. 91).

This is the one entry the engine's comment names when explaining its softening policy. The NAKSHATRA_TRAITS comment gives Ashlesha's "has an excessively wicked mind" as an example of a harsh character judgement "softened to a temperament tendency rather than a moral verdict". The line the app actually shows is: you tend to be "sharp-minded and restless, capable of real cunning when provoked". The same comment records the other standing omissions for all 27 entries: caste dropped, appearance and spouse lines dropped.

Saravali does not name Ashlesha in the corpus copy; nor does Bhrigu Sutras. Advanced Predictive Astrology mentions it only in its humour table, where it sits in the Kapha column (Vol. II, p. 225), a modern grouping reported as such, not medical advice. A Moon in Ashlesha is a Cancer Moon, so Saravali's sign chapter (Ch. 23) applies; that is covered on the Cancer page.

Gandanta: the seam between Ashlesha and Magha

BPHS Ch. 92 Sl. 3 defines Nakshatra Gandanta as three junctions, one of them "the last two Ghatikas of Aslesha and first two Ghatikas of Magha". A Ghatika is 24 minutes of time, and the Moon spends roughly a day in a nakshatra, so two Ghatikas is about a thirtieth of the nakshatra: very roughly the last half-degree of Ashlesha. Sl. 4 adds a Lagna Gandanta at the same place, the last half Ghatika of Kark and the first half Ghatika of Simh. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (p. 87) puts it more simply, calling Ashlesha a Gandantha nakshatra because it ends a rasi. The neighbour across the seam is Magha.

BPHS lists Gandanta births among inauspicious births (Ch. 85 Sl. 1-4) and in a longevity clause (Ch. 9 Sl. 13), and prescribes rites and gifts for them in Ch. 92 and Ch. 94, where Sl. 8-9 single out the Jyeshtha-Mula and Aslesha-Magha seams as needing the most. Those clauses are named so you know they exist; they are not predictions this page makes, and the app prescribes no remedies. The engine does not compute Gandanta at all.

The Moon's Navamsa in each Ashlesha pada: Saravali Ch. 24

Saravali Ch. 24 reads the Moon by its Navamsa and the aspecting graha. An Ashlesha Moon is in Jupiter's Navamsa in padas 1 and 4 (Sagittarius and Pisces, Sl. 16-18) and Saturn's in padas 2 and 3 (Capricorn and Aquarius, Sl. 19-21). Among the milder lines: a Jupiter Navamsa aspected by Jupiter, good looks, favour and wide fame; aspected by Mars, skill with weapons and fame; a Saturn Navamsa aspected by Jupiter, devotion to one's own work and greatness. Several others are harsh and not repeated. By Sl. 22-24, no Ashlesha pada is Vargottama or in the Moon's own Navamsa, so the readings apply at the minor level unless the Navamsa lord is stronger than the sign lord. The app does not compute Ch. 24.

Mercury, the lord of Ashlesha, and the 17-year Mahadasha

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15 runs the Vimshottari cycle from Krittika: Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, then Mercury with 17 years, so Ashlesha, seventh in the cycle, is Mercury's. The engine's nakshatraSubdivision() agrees. Mercury also rules Jyeshtha and Revati, and all three Mercury stars end a sign, so all three sit on a Gandanta seam. For Mercury as a graha, see Mercury in Vedic astrology.

The balance rule is BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 16. Your dates are in the Vimshottari Dasha calculator; the period is described on the Mercury Mahadasha page. BPHS Ch. 48 Sl. 1-8 makes a dasha's content depend on the lord's lordship and placement in your chart, not on the nakshatra.

The sub-periods inside the Mercury Mahadasha

In the worked example, 0.375 of 17 years, 6.375 years, had passed at birth: through Mercury's, Ketu's and Venus's sub-periods (6.23 years together) and into the Sun's. The engine's sub-lord table puts Cancer 21 degrees 40 minutes in the Sun sub (21 degrees 33 minutes to 22 degrees 13 minutes), the same answer, because sub-lord arcs and sub-periods are cut in the same proportions.

Mercury and the Moon, Ashlesha's star lord and sign lord, regard each other unequally. The engine's NATURAL_RELATIONS table makes Mercury a friend of the Moon but the Moon an enemy of Mercury, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's table (Ch. III, p. 85) says the same. Worked from Mercury's Mooltrikona, Virgo, by BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 55, Cancer is the 11th sign, not a friend position, which agrees.

Ashlesha as a dignity for every graha

Running the engine's dignityOf() anywhere in Ashlesha, with natural relationships only, gives: Sun, friendly sign; Moon, own sign; Mars, debilitated; Mercury, enemy sign; Jupiter, exalted; Venus, enemy sign; Saturn, enemy sign. So Mercury in its own nakshatra is in an enemy's sign.

Saravali's rays (Ch. 36 Sl. 3-6, the formula the engine's planetaryRays() uses) show the low point for Mars. Worked by hand, Mars has about 0.44 rays at the start of Ashlesha, exactly 0 at Cancer 28 degrees, and about 0.08 at the end; Sl. 3-4 say all authorities agree on zero at debilitation. Jupiter falls from about 6.55 to 6.03 as it moves away from Cancer 5 degrees; the Moon has about 4.14 falling to 3.62; Mercury about 4.7 rising to 5.3 as it nears its exaltation in Virgo. BPHS Ch. 50 Sl. 78-83 calls the dasha of a graha in deep debilitation Rikt and attaches losses to it; that is the classical label for a Mars near Cancer 28 degrees, reported as the text gives it, and the rest of the chart still decides.

The same sloka group names the opposite case for Jupiter. A graha between deep exaltation and deep debilitation, moving towards debilitation, has an Avrohini (descending) dasha in BPHS's terms, and Saravali Ch. 36 Sl. 5 calls its rays Paranmukha, facing downwards. Jupiter passed its peak at Cancer 5 degrees in Pushya, so a Jupiter in Ashlesha is still in its exaltation sign by the engine's label but on the descending side of the arc, with its rays falling. Neither text attaches a separate prediction to the label beyond its name, and the engine computes only the ray count.

The Sun crosses Ashlesha once a year: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters on 3 August and leaves for Magha on 17 August. With Ashlesha rising, the Ascendant is Cancer; BPHS Ch. 34 Sl. 27-28 names Venus and Mercury as malefics for that Ascendant, Mars, Jupiter and the Moon as auspicious, and Saturn and the Sun as killers, and the engine's YOGA_KARAKA_BY_LAGNA row matches. So for a Cancer Ascendant the lord of Ashlesha is classed a malefic. The Lagna calculator needs a birth time and place, and a birth time near the Lagna Gandanta at the end of Cancer is exactly where that matters.

The nine sub-lords inside Ashlesha

The engine divides Ashlesha in proportion to the Vimshottari years, starting with Mercury's own arc. Mars's deepest fall at Cancer 28 degrees falls in the Jupiter sub. The sub-lord calculator reports these for every graha.

The Gandanta stretch at the very end of the sign lies inside the Saturn sub. For why sub-lords need an accurate birth time, see the sub-lord and birth time.

Ashlesha in the Kala Chakra and the other dasha systems

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 56-58 places Aslesha in the Savya Kala Chakra and lists it among the nakshatras reckoned "in the same manner, as the Padas of Ashvini", so it takes Ashwini's Deha, Jiva and dasha rows. Adding the Sl. 84 years along those rows gives 100 for pada 1, 83 for pada 3 and 86 for pada 4; Sl. 89 assigns 100 to Mesh and its trines, 83 to Mithun and its trines and 86 to Kark and its trines, and Ashlesha's padas 1, 3 and 4 fall in Sagittarius, Aquarius and Pisces, the 9th signs from those. So three of the four rows check out; pada 2's row is not spelled out in full in the translation, which names only "the nine Rasis from Makar to Mithun", and the app reads it as the exact reverse of Mrigashira's pada 3 row, which totals 85. The app computes the Kala Chakra from these rows, and the text's span-of-life use of the totals is not repeated.

Read by hand, Ashtottari (Sl. 17-20) puts Ashlesha last in the Sun's group of four that begins at Ardra, and Sl. 21-22 give each of a malefic's stars a quarter of its dasha, here 1.5 of the Sun's 6 years, with the balance found as for Vimshottari. For a Moon 5 degrees into Ashlesha, three whole stars (4.5 years) plus 0.375 x 1.5 (about 0.56) have expired, leaving under a year, about 0.94 years, of the Sun's Ashtottari dasha at birth. Shastihayani (Sl. 40-41) lists Aslesha under Mars, 10 years. The app now computes both: Ashtottari with this same balance and every period dated, Shastihayani with a balance at birth and dated periods, by the published rule "as in Vimshottari", which comes from outside BPHS (Sanjay Rath), since the sloka itself gives no balance rule.

The six systems the engine does build appear in the alternate dashas calculator. For an Ashlesha Moon: Shodshottari (from Pushya) Mars, 12 years; Dwadashottari (birth star to Revati) Ketu, 11; Panchottari (from Anuradha) Moon, 17; Shatabdik (from Revati) Venus, 10; Chaturashiti-sama (from Swati) Sun, 12; Dwisaptati-sama (from Mula) Moon, 9. BPHS ties each to a particular kind of chart, and the calculator shows which apply.

Ashlesha in Ashtakoot matching

Running the engine's ashtakoot() with an Ashlesha Moon gives the values below. The Kundli matching calculator applies them to two charts.

Magha, the neighbour across the Gandanta seam, is an instructive pair for Ashlesha: the same Rakshasa gana (6 of 6) and full Tara (3 of 3), but the enemy yoni, Cat against Rat (0 of 4), and the same Antya nadi (0 of 8). The engine's comment says these are conventional tables, kept because no corpus book prints the Ashtakoot rules; its Tara rule never scores 0, because the two inclusive counts between different stars total 29 and cannot both leave 3, 5 or 7 after dividing by 9. Advanced Predictive Astrology's Kapha column (Vol. II, p. 225) is exactly the engine's Antya group. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's vainasika rule (Ch. IV, p. 89), the 22nd star from one's birth star, gives Krittika for Ashlesha; the app uses neither.

Ashlesha in muhurat

Ashlesha is on none of the six favoured lists in the engine's muhurat finder, so a window with the Moon there loses 6 points on the nakshatra factor and must be carried by tithi, paksha, the Moon's house from your chart, the weekday, Rahu Kaal and your numerology day. BPHS Ch. 92 Sl. 1 says that travel and auspicious functions such as marriage during Gandanta are to be avoided, which covers the last moments of Ashlesha; the engine does not test for it, and its activity lists cite no source.

Setting the engine's lists beside Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's four hot stars is instructive. Ardra, Ashlesha and Jyeshtha appear on none of the six lists, which fits the label; but Mula, the fourth hot star, is on the engine's Marriage list. So the lists are not derived from the book's natures, and the agreement for Ashlesha is a coincidence of outcome rather than evidence for the list.

From the engine's Moon positions, sampled every ten minutes, the next passes through Ashlesha are 2 November 2026 04:40 to 3 November 03:50 IST, 29 November 11:10 to 30 November 09:50 IST, and 26 December 20:20 to 27 December 18:10 IST. The muhurat finder samples three windows a day, at 06:40, 09:15 and 15:30 IST. The Panchang shows the current nakshatra.

Checking Ashlesha in your own chart

The Moon's nakshatra needs the date and a time, not the place. Its longitude in this app is good to about 0.1-0.3 degrees, as the methodology page explains, which is comparable to the width of the Gandanta stretch itself; so for a Moon in the last few tenths of a degree of Cancer the app cannot honestly say whether it is in Ashlesha or across the seam in Magha, and the first Mahadasha (Mercury or Ketu) and the Moon sign (Cancer or Leo) change with it. The ayanamsa moves every boundary together; see why apps disagree on your nakshatra. The Moon sign calculator shows sign and nakshatra together.

Ashlesha between Pushya and Magha

Before Ashlesha is Pushya, Saturn's star, which holds Jupiter's deepest exaltation; after it, across the Gandanta seam, is Magha, the Ketu star that opens Leo and the second cycle of nine. Ashlesha shares its Cat yoni with Punarvasu and closes the Punarvasu-Pushya-Aaslesha triad as its Laya member.

Which planet rules Ashlesha nakshatra?

Mercury, with a 17-year Mahadasha, in the Vimshottari scheme of BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15. The sign lord is the Moon, because all of Ashlesha is in Cancer.

Who is the deity of Ashlesha?

The serpent: BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names Ahi, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 97) names a Serpent, adding "(Rahu)".

What is the symbol of Ashlesha?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara describes six stars like a discus or wheel, represented by serpents, water creatures and reptiles. The engine's Yoni animal for Ashlesha is the Cat, shared with Punarvasu.

Is Ashlesha a Gandanta nakshatra?

Its end is. BPHS Ch. 92 Sl. 3 makes the last two Ghatikas (about 48 minutes of the Moon's time) of Aslesha and the first two of Magha a Nakshatra Gandanta. The app does not compute Gandanta.

Why are the classical descriptions of Ashlesha so harsh, and does the app use them?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's prose and sloka for Ashlesha are lists of moral verdicts. The engine's comment names Ashlesha as an example it softened to a temperament tendency; the app shows only "sharp-minded and restless, capable of real cunning when provoked".

Is Mars debilitated in Ashlesha?

Yes: all of Cancer is Mars's debilitation sign, and its deepest fall, Cancer 28 degrees, is in Ashlesha's fourth pada (BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50), where Saravali's ray count reaches zero.

What is the gana, yoni and nadi of Ashlesha?

Rakshasa gana, Cat yoni and Antya nadi in this app's matching engine, which uses the conventional tables.

Is Ashlesha good for a muhurat?

It is on none of this app's six activity lists, so it costs a window 6 points on the nakshatra factor. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classes it as hot, downward-looking and Gandantha.

What are the durithamsa padas of Ashlesha?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 88) calls the 3rd and 4th quarters of every Laya star durithamsa, believed unfavourable; for Ashlesha these are Cancer 23 degrees 20 minutes to 30 degrees, the stretch that also holds Mars's deepest fall and the Gandanta seam. The app does not use the label.

Which Kala Chakra group is Ashlesha in?

The Savya group reckoned like Ashwini (BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 58). Its pada 1, 3 and 4 rows total 100, 83 and 86 years, matching Sl. 89 for its Navamsas; its pada 2 row, read as the reverse of Mrigashira pada 3, totals 85. The app computes the Kala Chakra.

When is the Sun in Ashlesha?

Once a year for about two weeks: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters Ashlesha on 3 August and Magha on 17 August.

How long is the Mercury dasha at birth for an Ashlesha Moon?

Up to 17 years: 17 times the share of Ashlesha still ahead of the Moon. 5 degrees in leaves 10.625 years.