Hasta Nakshatra: the Sun-deity star in Virgo, Mercury's deep exaltation and the Moon dasha

Hasta is the thirteenth nakshatra, Virgo 10 degrees to Virgo 23 degrees 20 minutes, wholly inside Mercury's sign. Its Vimshottari lord is the Moon, as for Rohini, and its classical deity is the Sun. It contains Mercury's deepest exaltation point, and inside its 13 degrees 20 minutes Mercury passes through all three of its dignities in Virgo: exaltation, Mooltrikona and own sign. If your Moon was in Hasta at birth, it sets the 10-year Moon Mahadasha your life began in, gives you the Buffalo yoni, Deva gana and Aadi nadi, and places your Moon under a sub-lord. The nakshatra calculator shows yours.

This page sets out what the corpus books say about Hasta, 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. For Moon sign and nakshatra in general see Moon sign and nakshatra; for the sign, Virgo, Kanya Rashi.

Where Hasta sits, and Mercury's three dignities

Twelve nakshatras of 13 degrees 20 minutes reach Virgo 10 degrees, and Hasta runs from there to Virgo 23 degrees 20 minutes (Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara, Ch. II, pp. 22-23, for the arithmetic). All four padas are in Virgo. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50 makes Virgo Mercury's exaltation sign with the deepest point at 15 degrees, and Sl. 51-54 split the sign three ways for Mercury: "the first 15 degrees are exaltation zone, the next 5 degrees Mooltrikon and the last 10 degrees are own Bhava." Hasta covers Virgo 10 to 23 degrees 20 minutes, so it contains the end of the exaltation zone, the deepest point, all of the Mooltrikona and the start of the own-sign portion. The same sign is Venus's fall, deepest at 27 degrees, a little past Hasta in Chitra.

Here the engine follows BPHS exactly. Its DIGNITY table gives Mercury an exaltation end-point at Virgo 15 degrees and its MOOLATRIKONA table gives Mercury Virgo 15 to 20 degrees, both citing Ch. 3 Sl. 51-54; the comments record that each bound was corrected to match the text. Running dignityOf() through Hasta gives Mercury Exalted in pada 1 and in pada 2 up to 15 degrees, Moolatrikona from 15 to 20 degrees, and Own sign from 20 degrees to the end of pada 4. Hasta is exactly where those corrections mattered. The comments say that before the exaltation bound was added every degree of Virgo was labelled Exalted, so the Mooltrikona band could never be reached, and that the Mooltrikona band once began at 16 degrees, so a Mercury between Virgo 15 and 16 degrees, inside Hasta's second pada, fell through to Own sign. Both are fixed in the code this page was checked against.

Virgo is dual and counts its navamsas from its 5th sign, Capricorn, so Hasta's padas, the 4th to 7th navamsas of Virgo, are Aries to Cancer. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 87-88 agrees: twelve nakshatras have passed, 12 divided by 3 leaves 0, plus the pada gives the 1st to 4th signs from Mesh. Virgo itself is the 9th navamsa of Virgo, which falls in Chitra, so no graha in Hasta is Vargottama. See the Navamsa (D9) calculator.

The Sun as deity, and the hand

BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names the thirteenth nakshatra deity Surya, the Sun, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 100) agrees, naming Savitha (the sun) and describing Hasta as five stars in the form of a hand. So Hasta is a Moon-ruled star whose deity is the Sun, much as Mrigashira is a Mars-ruled star whose deity is the Moon. The Saptavimshamsa (D27) calculator uses the BPHS list.

The entry gives Hasta's sex as male, its tatthwa as Tejo (fire), its region as the South, its body part as the fingers and its emblem as the ficus tree (Atti); the direction table (p. 90) and body-part table (p. 91) agree. It names a caste, which is not carried over. Its occupation list mixes trades (well-diggers, barbers, weavers, physicians, garland makers, elephant keepers, charioteers, merchants, a chief minister, people learned in the shastras) with moral labels that are not repeated here.

How Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classifies Hasta

Hasta's double listing is the counterpart of Punarvasu's absence from the same lists: 27 slots, 26 different stars. The book ties nature to timing (p. 91): during the period of a planet in a particular star, effects are felt according to its characteristics. It does not say how to combine two labels for one star, and this page does not guess. The body-part table, it says, helps locate disease when read with the 6th lord; for Hasta, the fingers; that is its claim, not medical advice. Its yoga list (pp. 28-29) says the sixth yoga, Athiganda, begins at Hasta; that places the yoga on the zodiac and does not transfer the yoga's traits, some of them harsh, to Hasta births.

Two descriptions of a Hasta birth that do not agree

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's prose and sloka for Hasta point in opposite directions, more sharply than for any nakshatra before it. The prose (p. 101) begins with active habits and being full of resources and then turns into a list of moral verdicts that this page does not repeat as a reading of anyone. The translated sloka is favourable: the person born in Hasta is generous, celebrated and self-willed, serves kings and gods though not inclined towards fire-rituals, and acquires wealth without exertion. The book does not reconcile the two. As for every entry, it says the effects come fully only if the Moon is powerful (p. 91).

The engine's NAKSHATRA_TRAITS table takes the sloka, not the prose: you tend to be "generous and self-willed, drawn to serving others, able to build wealth without much strain". Its comment gives the standing rule for all 27 entries: caste dropped, appearance and spouse lines dropped, harsh verdicts softened to a tendency. For Hasta the choice of source line does most of the work; the prose's verdicts are not used anywhere in the app.

Saravali does not name Hasta in the corpus copy, and neither does Bhrigu Sutras. A Hasta Moon is a Virgo Moon, so Saravali's sign chapter (Ch. 23) applies; it is covered on the Virgo page. Advanced Predictive Astrology puts Hasta in the Vata column of its humour table (Vol. II, p. 225) and among nine stars said to rule over wind (p. 240), a modern grouping reported as such, not medical advice; the same book (p. 83) remarks that an Ascendant and Moon sharing one constellation make its themes dominant, with Swati as its example, a view the app does not apply.

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

Saravali Ch. 24 reads the Moon by its Navamsa and the aspecting graha. A Hasta Moon is in Mars's Navamsa in pada 1 (Aries, Sl. 1-3), Venus's in pada 2 (Taurus, Sl. 4-6), Mercury's in pada 3 (Gemini, Sl. 7-9) and its own in pada 4 (Cancer, Sl. 10-12). Among the milder lines: Mars's Navamsa aspected by Jupiter, fame and honour from the learned; Venus's aspected by Venus, comfort in clothes, food and drink; Mercury's aspected by Mercury, skill in the fine or mechanical arts and poetry; aspected by Saturn, skill in the shastras and poetry; the Moon's own Navamsa aspected by Jupiter, a minister or a king. Others are harsh and not repeated.

The Moon, the lord of Hasta, and the Moon Mahadasha

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15 begins the Vimshottari cycle at Krittika with the Sun, then the Moon, so the second star of each cycle is the Moon's: Rohini, Hasta and Shravana, with 10 years. The engine's nakshatraSubdivision() agrees, and Hasta's sub-lord arcs repeat Rohini's, moved to Virgo. For the Moon as a graha, see the Moon in Vedic astrology.

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 16 gives the balance rule. Your dates are in the Vimshottari Dasha calculator; the period is described on the Moon 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 Moon Mahadasha

In the worked example 0.375 of 10 years, 3.75 years, had passed at birth: through the Moon, Mars and Rahu sub-periods (2.92 years together) and into Jupiter's. The engine's sub-lord table puts Virgo 15 degrees in the Jupiter sub (13 degrees 53 minutes to 15 degrees 40 minutes), the same answer by construction. Mercury's deepest exaltation point, Virgo 15 degrees, also lies in that Jupiter sub.

The Moon and Mercury, Hasta's star lord and sign lord, regard each other unevenly: the engine's NATURAL_RELATIONS 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 itself, by BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 55, Cancer is the 11th sign, not a friend position, which agrees.

Hasta as a dignity for every graha

Hasta is where Mercury is strongest by every measure the engine has: the highest label and the full 7 rays at Virgo 15 degrees. BPHS Ch. 50 Sl. 78-83 describes the dasha of a graha in deep exaltation and endowed with all six kinds of strength as bringing great gains and glory, and of one merely in its exaltation sign as opulent with some chance of illness; a Mercury near Virgo 15 degrees is the textbook case for the first condition, though the text requires the six strengths as well. At the other extreme, Venus in Hasta is debilitated and, by the end of the nakshatra, within a few degrees of its deepest fall; Sl. 59-60 rate a debilitated graha's good effects as nil.

The Sun crosses Hasta once a year: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters on 27 September and leaves for Chitra on 11 October. With Hasta rising the Ascendant is Virgo, and BPHS Ch. 34 Sl. 31-32 name Mars, Jupiter and the Moon as malefics for it, Mercury and Venus as auspicious, a Venus-Mercury conjunction as producing Yoga, Venus also as a killer, and the Sun's role as depending on its association. The engine's YOGA_KARAKA_BY_LAGNA row for Virgo matches. So for a Virgo Ascendant the lord of Hasta, the Moon, is classed a malefic. The Venus-Mercury clause meets an odd case in Hasta: a conjunction of the two here falls in Virgo, where Mercury is exalted and Venus debilitated, and for a Virgo Ascendant it would be in the rising sign itself. The sloka names the conjunction as Yoga-producing without discussing the dignities, and the engine's Virgo row lists no Yoga Karaka, so the app does not flag the combination. The Lagna calculator needs a birth time and place.

The nine sub-lords inside Hasta

The engine divides Hasta in proportion to the Vimshottari years, beginning with the Moon's own arc. The sub-lord calculator reports these for every graha.

For why sub-lords need an accurate birth time, see the sub-lord and birth time.

Hasta in the Kala Chakra and the other dasha systems

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 56-58 places Hast at the head of the third Savya triad (Hast, Chitra, Swati) 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; Hasta's padas 1, 3 and 4 fall in the Navamsas Aries, Gemini and Cancer, which Sl. 89 assigns exactly 100, 83 and 86. Pada 2's row is not spelled out in full in the translation, which names only "the nine Rasis from Makar to Mithun"; the app reads it as the exact reverse of Mrigashira's pada 3 row, which gives 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) gives Hasta to Mars, first of its four stars (Hasta, Chitra, Swati, Vishakha), in an 8-year dasha; Sl. 21-22 give each of a malefic's stars a quarter, 2 years, with the balance found as for Vimshottari. For a Moon 5 degrees into Hasta, 0.375 x 2 = 0.75 years have expired, leaving about 7.25 years of Mars's Ashtottari dasha at birth. Shastihayani (Sl. 40-41) lists Hast under the Moon, 6 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 builds appear in the alternate dashas calculator. For a Hasta Moon: Shodshottari (from Pushya) Moon, 16 years; Dwadashottari (birth star to Revati) Saturn, 19; Panchottari (from Anuradha) Saturn, 14; Shatabdik (from Revati) Saturn, 30; Chaturashiti-sama (from Swati) Jupiter, 12; Dwisaptati-sama (from Mula) Venus, 9. Three of the six begin with Saturn. These are also where Hasta and Rohini, identical in Vimshottari, part ways: Rohini starts Shodshottari with Venus and Shatabdik with Jupiter.

Hasta in Ashtakoot matching

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

The full-Tara list always has the same shape: the star itself, its two neighbours, and the three stars nine and eighteen places further on, so for Hasta the Uttara Phalguni-Hasta-Chitra trio repeats at Uttara Ashadha-Shravana-Dhanishta and Krittika-Rohini-Mrigashira. Ashwini is an instructive pair for Hasta: the same Deva gana (6 of 6) but the enemy yoni, Horse against Buffalo (0 of 4), the same Aadi nadi (0 of 8) and Tara 1.5. The engine's comment calls its Gana, Yoni and Nadi tables the conventional ones, kept because no corpus book prints the Ashtakoot rules; its Tara rule never scores 0, since 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 Vata column (Vol. II, p. 225) is exactly the engine's Aadi group. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's vainasika rule (Ch. IV, p. 89), the 22nd star from one's birth star to be avoided for auspicious events, gives Punarvasu for Hasta; the app uses neither.

Hasta in muhurat

Hasta is on five of the six lists in the engine's muhurat finder: Marriage, Business launch, Travel, New job and Investment; only Property purchase leaves it out. That makes it one of four stars on five lists (with Rohini, Uttara Phalguni and Uttara Ashadha, all three of which leave out Travel instead), while Anuradha is on all six. A listed nakshatra adds 16 points to a window and an unlisted one subtracts 6; scoreMoment() then adds the Moon's house from your chart, the tithi, the fortnight, the weekday, Rahu Kaal and your numerology personal day to a base of 34, capped at 0 and 100.

The lists cite no source. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's two labels for Hasta, light and movable, fit its place on the Travel, Business launch and New job lists alongside the other light stars Ashwini and Pushya, and its absence from Property purchase, a list that holds three of the book's four fixed stars and four of its soft ones but none of its light ones. That is agreement of outcome, not a citation for the lists.

From the engine's Moon positions, sampled every ten minutes, the Moon enters Hasta at 21:30 IST on 9 October 2026, the day this page was written, and leaves at 21:50 IST on 10 October; the next passes are 6 November 04:00 to 7 November 04:50 IST and 3 December 09:30 to 4 December 10:30 IST, each a little over 24 hours. The muhurat finder samples three windows a day, at 06:40, 09:15 and 15:30 IST. The Panchang shows the current nakshatra.

Checking Hasta in your own chart

The Moon's nakshatra needs the date and a time, not the place. The app's Moon longitude is good to about 0.1-0.3 degrees, as the methodology page explains, so a Moon within a few tenths of a degree of Virgo 10 degrees or 23 degrees 20 minutes could honestly be in Uttara Phalguni or Chitra, changing the first Mahadasha from the Moon to the Sun or Mars. The ayanamsa moves every boundary together; see why apps disagree on your nakshatra. The Moon sign calculator shows sign and nakshatra together.

Hasta between Uttara Phalguni and Chitra

Before Hasta is Uttara Phalguni, the Sun's star, which crosses from Leo into Virgo; after it is Chitra, Mars's star, which crosses from Virgo into Libra and holds Venus's deepest fall. Hasta opens the Hasta-Chitra-Swathi triad as its Sristi member and shares its Buffalo yoni with Swati. Its sign lord throughout is Mercury; see Mercury in Vedic astrology.

Which planet rules Hasta nakshatra?

The Moon, with a 10-year Mahadasha, in the Vimshottari scheme of BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15. The sign lord is Mercury, because all of Hasta is in Virgo.

Who is the deity of Hasta?

The Sun: BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names Surya, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 100) names Savitha (the sun).

What is the symbol of Hasta?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara describes five stars in the form of a hand, represented by the ficus tree; its body part is the fingers. The engine's Yoni animal is the Buffalo, shared with Swati.

Is Mercury exalted in Hasta?

Partly. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 51-54 makes Virgo 0-15 degrees Mercury's exaltation zone (deepest at 15), 15-20 its Mooltrikona and 20-30 its own sign. Hasta, Virgo 10 to 23 degrees 20 minutes, spans all three; the engine labels them the same way.

Why do the classical descriptions of Hasta contradict each other?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's prose for Hasta is mostly a list of moral verdicts, while its translated sloka calls the Hasta-born generous, celebrated and able to gain wealth without exertion. The book does not reconcile them; the app's one-line trait follows the sloka.

What is the gana, yoni and nadi of Hasta?

Deva gana, Buffalo yoni and Aadi nadi in this app's matching engine, which uses the conventional tables.

Is Hasta good for travel or business?

In this app's muhurat engine it is on the Marriage, Business launch, Travel, New job and Investment lists, worth 16 points on the nakshatra factor. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classes it as both light and movable.

Which Kala Chakra group is Hasta in?

The Savya group reckoned like Ashwini (BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 58). The app computes the Kala Chakra on the alternate dashas calculator and the Kundali screen.

Is Venus debilitated in Hasta?

Yes: all of Virgo is Venus's debilitation sign (BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50), and the engine labels a Venus anywhere in Hasta debilitated. Its deepest fall, Virgo 27 degrees, is just past Hasta in Chitra; Saravali's ray count falls to about 0.14 by the end of Hasta.

When is the Sun in Hasta?

Once a year for about two weeks: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters on 27 September and leaves for Chitra on 11 October.

How long is the Moon dasha at birth for a Hasta Moon?

Up to 10 years: 10 times the share of Hasta still ahead of the Moon. 5 degrees in leaves 6.25 years.