Krittika Nakshatra: Agni's star across Aries and Taurus, the Sun dasha and what the texts say

Krittika is the third nakshatra and the first to cross a sign boundary. Its opening pada is the last 3 degrees 20 minutes of Aries; its other three padas are the first 10 degrees of Taurus. It is also the nakshatra from which BPHS begins counting the Vimshottari dasha lords, so it sits at the head of the most-used timing system in Indian astrology. If your Moon was in Krittika at birth, it decides your first Mahadasha (the Sun's), your yoni, gana and nadi in matching, and the sub-lord your Moon occupies. The nakshatra calculator shows whether your Moon is in Krittika and in which pada.

Below is what the classical books in this app's corpus say about Krittika, cited to chapter, sloka or page, alongside what this app's engine computes for it. The books are Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (BPHS), Kalyana Varma's Saravali, Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara and Advanced Predictive Astrology, all listed on the sources page. For Moon sign and nakshatra in general, see Moon sign and nakshatra. Because Krittika spans two signs, both Aries and Taurus are relevant to it.

Where Krittika sits: one pada in Aries, three in Taurus

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. II, pp. 22-23) gives each nakshatra 13 degrees 20 minutes and each pada 3 degrees 20 minutes, with nine padas to a sign. Three nakshatras of four padas make twelve padas, more than one sign holds, so the third nakshatra must spill over: Krittika's first pada closes Aries and its remaining three open Taurus. The sign lord is therefore Mars for pada 1 and Venus for padas 2 to 4.

Krittika holds two of BPHS's key dignity points. Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50 makes the Sun exalted in Aries, so a Sun in pada 1 is exalted. The same sloka makes the Moon exalted in Taurus with its deepest point at 3 degrees, which falls in Krittika's second pada (Taurus 0 degrees to 3 degrees 20 minutes). Sl. 51-54 adds that after those first 3 degrees of exaltation, the rest of Taurus is the Moon's Mooltrikona. So a Moon in Krittika is exalted in pada 2 up to Taurus 3 degrees, and in Mooltrikona from there to the end of the nakshatra; only a Moon in pada 1, in Aries, lacks either dignity.

The Navamsa signs can be checked by hand two ways. The engine's rule counts a movable sign's navamsas from the sign itself and a fixed sign's from its 9th: Aries's 9th navamsa is Sagittarius, and Taurus counts from Capricorn, so its first three navamsas are Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 87-88 reaches the same signs another way: two nakshatras have passed before Krittika, 2 divided by 3 leaves 2, times 4 is 8, plus the pada gives the 9th to 12th signs from Mesh. None of the four padas repeats its own sign, so no graha in Krittika is Vargottama. See the Navamsa calculator for your own chart.

Why the Vimshottari count starts at Krittika

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-14 opens its rule for the Vimshottari dasha with Krittika, not Ashwini: "Beginning from Kritika, the Lords of Dashas are Sūrya, Candr, Mangal, Rahu, Guru, Śani, Budh, Ketu and Śukr in that order." The same nine lords then repeat for every nine nakshatras, so Krittika, Uttara Phalguni and Uttara Ashadha all belong to the Sun. The sloka goes on to say that if the nakshatras from Krittika to the birth nakshatra are counted and divided by nine, the remainder names the lord of the first dasha. It also gives the reason for the 120-year total: in Kali Yuga the natural span of a human life is generally taken as 120 years, which is why Sl. 2-5 and Sl. 12-14 call Vimshottari the most appropriate dasha for most people.

This app's engine starts its table at Ashwini with Ketu instead, which gives the same lord for every nakshatra: counting from Krittika, Ashwini is the 26th, and 26 divided by 9 leaves 8, the eighth lord in BPHS's order, Ketu. The two starting points are bookkeeping conventions that cannot disagree. What Krittika's position does mean is that the Sun heads the classical sequence, and Sl. 15 lists the years in that order: Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17, Ketu 7, Venus 20.

Agni, the flame and the peacock

BPHS gives the nakshatra deities in Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 as the lords of the 27 parts of the Saptavimshamsa, and the third is Agni. The Saptavimshamsa (D27) calculator uses that list. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's entry (Ch. IV, p. 93) agrees: Krittika is in the form of a fire-flame, consists of six stars, and its presiding deity is Agni.

The same entry gives Krittika's sex as female, its tatthwa as Prithvi (earth), its region as Central, its body part as the head, and its emblem as the peacock. It then names occupations, saying they have to do with fire: pottery, smithy, and priests who perform sacrificial rites. The entry also names a caste, which this page and the engine leave out. The direction table (p. 90) agrees with the entry here, putting Krittika, Rohini and Mrigashira in the Central regions, and the body-part table (p. 91) begins with Krittika as the head, which is why that table reads from Krittika down to Revati rather than from Ashwini.

How Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classifies Krittika

The "nature" labels are the one classification the book ties to timing. Right after listing them it says that during the period of a planet situated in a particular star, effects will be felt according to these characteristics (p. 91). So in that book's terms the dasha of any graha placed in Krittika, not only the Sun's, takes on the mixed soft-and-hot quality. The book gives no more detail than that sentence, and the engine does not use it.

Krittika's durithamsa padas are Taurus 3 degrees 20 minutes to 10 degrees. The book gives no further rule for them, and this app does not use the label; it is shown so that a reader who meets the term knows exactly which stretch it means. In the calendar (Ch. II, p. 24) the month Kartika is named after Krittika, the star the full Moon occupies in that month; and in the yoga list (pp. 28-29) the 23rd yoga, Shubha, is said to begin at Krittika, by the book's own yoga-point arithmetic. Neither of these transfers any trait to people born in the nakshatra.

What the texts say about a person born in Krittika

Krittika is a case where both of Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's descriptions are mostly unfavourable, and where the app's one-line version departs furthest from its source. The prose (p. 93) credits the Krittika-born with a bright appearance and widespread fame, and also calls them a glutton and adds a clause about relationships. The translated sloka is harsher: it speaks of constant hunger, a lack of truth and wealth, aimless wandering, ingratitude, harsh speech and deeds harmful to others. The book again conditions every entry on a strong Moon (p. 91).

The engine's NAKSHATRA_TRAITS table renders Krittika as: you tend to be "bright and hard-working, though prone to restlessness and a sharp tongue". The comment above the table states the policy: caste labels dropped, appearance and spouse predictions dropped, and harsh character judgements softened to a tendency rather than a verdict. For Krittika that means the relationship clause is gone, the moral verdicts are reduced to restlessness and a sharp tongue, and "bright" survives from the prose. This page follows the same rule: the harsh lines are described so you know they exist, not repeated as a reading of you.

Saravali's Raja Yoga chapter (Ch. 35) mentions Krittika three times. Sl. 163 lists the Moon in Pushyami, Krittika or Aswini among the births of an emperor. Sl. 148 makes Venus in the Ascendant a ruler if it occupies Krittika, Revati, Swati, Pushyami or Aswini; a Venus in Krittika's padas 2 to 4 is also in its own sign, Taurus. And Sl. 87 says that one born with the Moon in Krittika together with a Gandanta Lagna, a Vishti (Bhadra) Karana, or a Parigha or Vyatipata yoga will become a king, a striking clause, since those conditions are elsewhere treated as unfavourable. "King" is the classical scale of prominence, reported as the text gives it.

This app's yoga calculator does not test these nakshatra clauses, so a chart that meets one will not be flagged for it. Advanced Predictive Astrology (Vol. II, p. 83) adds a modern remark in a list of vices: when the Moon is in Krittika, "(Sun)" ruled, it calls the result Mada, the term the book uses for pride or intoxication. That is one author's view, and the app does not use it.

The other three conditions in Sl. 87 are almanac elements that Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara defines in its Ch. II. Parigha and Vyathipatha are the 19th and 17th of its 27 yogas (pp. 28-29), each beginning at a fixed nakshatra by the book's yoga-point arithmetic, and Bhadra appears in its karana table (p. 31), where each tithi is split into two karanas. This app's Panchang computes neither the 27 yogas nor the karanas, so it cannot test Sl. 87 for you; the clause is reported, not applied.

When Krittika holds a graha other than the Moon

The engine labels every graha's dignity from its sign and degree, and because Krittika straddles two signs its labels change at the Aries-Taurus line. Running dignityOf() at the middle of each pada gives the following.

One row differs from BPHS. Ch. 3 Sl. 51-54 says that after the first 3 degrees of Taurus, which are the Moon's exaltation portion, the rest of the sign is her Mooltrikona. The engine's table does list Taurus 3 to 30 degrees as the Moon's Mooltrikona, but it checks exaltation first and gives the Moon no exaltation end-point, so every Moon in Taurus is labelled Exalted and the Mooltrikona band is never reached. For a Moon in Krittika's padas 2 to 4 this changes the label, not the strength score: the engine's ladder treats exaltation and Mooltrikona as equal. It is reported here as a difference between the engine and the text, not corrected on this page.

Saravali's chapter on planetary rays (Ch. 36) gives a continuous measure that shows the same thing without labels, and the engine's computePlanetaryRays() follows it. Sl. 6: subtract the graha's deep debilitation point from its position, take the shorter arc, multiply by the maximum rays and divide by six signs; Sl. 3-4 report that most authorities give every graha 7 rays at exaltation and 0 at debilitation. The Moon's deep debilitation is Scorpio 3 degrees, so worked by hand a Moon at the start of Krittika has about 6.75 rays, exactly 7 at Taurus 3 degrees, and about 6.73 at the end of the nakshatra: Krittika is the stretch where the Moon is closest to its maximum. The Sun, whose deep debilitation is Libra 10 degrees, has about 6.35 rays at the start of Krittika and 5.83 at its end, falling steadily as it moves away from its exaltation point in Ashwini. The engine computes exactly this base figure; its comment says it does not apply the corrections of Sl. 7-9 for dwadasamsa, retrogression and combustion, and calls that a documented simplification.

The Sun passes through Krittika once a year. Running the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 puts its entry into Krittika on 11 May and into Rohini on 25 May, so anyone born in roughly the middle two weeks of May has the Sun in Krittika: exalted for the first few days while it is still in Aries, then in Taurus, which the engine labels an enemy sign for the Sun.

The Sun Mahadasha a Krittika Moon begins with

A Moon in Krittika starts life in the Sun's Mahadasha, the shortest of the nine at 6 years. The balance at birth follows BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 16: the dasha's years multiplied by the share of the nakshatra the Moon has not yet crossed. The Vimshottari Dasha calculator computes it from your Moon's longitude, and the period is described on the Sun Mahadasha page. For the Sun as a graha, see the Sun in Vedic astrology.

Because the Sun's dasha is short, a Krittika Moon born past the middle of the nakshatra usually moves into the Moon's Mahadasha within the first two or three years of life, so the Sun's period is mostly over before memory begins. BPHS Ch. 48 Sl. 1-8 makes the reading of any dasha depend on the lord's house rulership and placement in the individual chart, so the nakshatra alone sets the dates, not the content. For how the periods subdivide, see Antardasha and Pratyantar.

The Sun and Venus, the sign lord of Krittika's last three padas, are natural enemies in this app's NATURAL_RELATIONS table (Venus's enemies are the Sun and Moon; the Sun's are Saturn and Venus). That matches what BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 55 gives when worked from their Mooltrikona signs, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's table (Ch. III, p. 85) lists the same pair as enemies. For pada 1 the sign lord is Mars, whom both tables count as the Sun's friend.

The nine sub-lords inside Krittika

The engine splits Krittika into nine arcs in proportion to the Vimshottari years, the first belonging to the Sun as the nakshatra's own lord (BPHS Ch. 51 Sl. 2 gives the first sub-period to the dasha lord). The Rahu sub straddles the Aries-Taurus boundary. These are the arcs the sub-lord calculator reports.

The Moon's deepest exaltation at Taurus 3 degrees is the exact point where the Jupiter sub ends and Saturn's begins. A Moon that close to a boundary is a case where the app's Moon accuracy of about 0.1-0.3 degrees matters; see the sub-lord and birth time.

Krittika in the Kala Chakra and other dasha systems

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 56-58 places Krittika in the Savya (clockwise) Kala Chakra, and Sl. 58 lists Kritika among the nakshatras whose padas "should be reckoned in the same manner, as the Padas of Ashvini". So Krittika's four padas take Ashwini's Deha and Jiva signs, shown in the first table. The pada rows can be checked against Sl. 89, which gives the full years for each Navamsa as 100 for Mesh, 85 for Vrishabh, 83 for Mithun and 86 for Kark, and the same for the 5th and 9th signs from them. Adding the Kala Chakra years of Sl. 84 along Ashwini's pada 1 row (Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter) gives 100, and Krittika pada 1's Navamsa, Sagittarius, is the 9th from Mesh. The pada 3 row gives 83 and pada 4 gives 86, matching Aquarius and Pisces, the 9th signs from Mithun and Kark. The translation names only the end signs of the pada 2 row; the app reads it as the exact reverse of Mrigashira's pada 3 row (Makar, Kumbh, Meen, Vrischik, Tula, Kanya, Kark, Simh, Mithun), which totals 85, matching Sl. 89 for Capricorn, Krittika pada 2's Navamsa. This app computes the Kala Chakra from these rows, and the text's span-of-life use of these totals is not repeated.

Ashtottari (Sl. 17-20) places Krittika in Venus's group of three with Rohini and Mrigashira, a 21-year dasha in that system, and Shastihayani (Sl. 40-41) lists Kritika under Guru. The app computes both, Ashtottari with its balance and dates, Shastihayani with a balance 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. They and the six remainder systems appear in the alternate dashas calculator:

Krittika in Ashtakoot matching

The engine's ashtakoot() function, run with a Krittika Moon, returns the nakshatra-based values below. The Kundli matching calculator applies them to two charts.

The engine's own comment explains that these tables are the conventional ones: no book in the corpus prints the Ashtakoot rules, so an audit's suggested changes had nothing to cite and were not made. Its Tara rule counts inclusively both ways and calls a count bad when it leaves 3, 5 or 7 after dividing by 9; the two counts always sum to 29, so they are never both bad and Tara never scores 0 here. The full-score set is always the star itself, its two neighbours, and the same three positions nine and eighteen stars away.

Advanced Predictive Astrology (Vol. II, p. 225) gives one outside check on Nadi: its table of "humour producing asterisms" puts Krittika in the Kapha column, and that column's nine stars are exactly the engine's Antya Nadi group. The book uses the grouping for health tendencies; this is reported as its view, not medical advice. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara has its own counting rule too (Ch. IV, p. 89): the 22nd star from one's birth star is vainasika, to be avoided for auspicious events. Counting Krittika as the first, that is Shatabhisha. The app does not use the vainasika rule.

Krittika in muhurat

In the engine's muhurat finder, Krittika is on none of the six favoured activity lists, so a window with the Moon in Krittika loses 6 points on the nakshatra factor and gains nothing from it. Those lists cite no source, and no book in this corpus gives per-activity muhurat lists. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's labels point the same way without settling it: Krittika is classed as soft and hot, downward-looking, and a Laya star with durithamsa padas. The Moon passes through Krittika about once every 27.3 days; the Panchang shows the day's nakshatra.

Checking Krittika in your own chart

Whether your Moon is in Krittika needs the date and a time, not the place; the place is needed for the Ascendant and houses. The Moon covers Krittika in about a day and a pada in roughly six hours. With the app's Moon longitude good to about 0.1-0.3 degrees, as the methodology page states, a Moon within a few tenths of a degree of Aries 26 degrees 40 minutes, of the Aries-Taurus line, or of Taurus 10 degrees may honestly sit on either side. Pada 1 versus pada 2 is also a sign change, so it moves the Moon sign as well. A different ayanamsa shifts every boundary together; see why apps disagree on your nakshatra. The Moon sign calculator shows sign and nakshatra together.

Krittika between Bharani and Rohini

Krittika closes the first triad of nakshatras (Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika), which Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara labels Sristi, Sthithi, Laya. After it comes Rohini, ruled by the Moon and lying wholly in Taurus. The Sun rules two more nakshatras, Uttara Phalguni and Uttara Ashadha, and like Krittika both of them cross a sign boundary.

Which planet rules Krittika nakshatra?

The Sun, with a Mahadasha of 6 years. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-14 begins the whole Vimshottari sequence from Krittika with the Sun. The sign lord is Mars for pada 1 (Aries) and Venus for padas 2-4 (Taurus).

Who is the deity of Krittika?

Agni. BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 lists Agni third among the nakshatra deities, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 93) names Agni as the presiding deity of the six-star, flame-shaped asterism.

Is Krittika in Aries or Taurus?

Both. Pada 1 is Aries 26 degrees 40 minutes to 30 degrees; padas 2, 3 and 4 are Taurus 0 to 10 degrees. A Moon in pada 1 is an Aries Moon, and in padas 2-4 a Taurus Moon.

Is the Moon exalted in Krittika?

In padas 2 to 4, yes in classical terms: BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-54 makes Taurus the Moon's exaltation sign, deepest at 3 degrees, with the rest of Taurus its Mooltrikona. A Moon in pada 1 is in Aries and has neither dignity.

Why does the app start the dasha table at Ashwini when BPHS starts at Krittika?

Either starting point gives every nakshatra the same lord, because the nine lords repeat every nine stars. Counting from Krittika, Ashwini is 26th; 26 leaves 8 after dividing by 9, which is Ketu, the lord the engine assigns.

What is the gana, yoni and nadi of Krittika?

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

What are the durithamsa padas of Krittika?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 88) calls the 3rd and 4th quarters of every Laya star durithamsa, believed unfavourable. For Krittika these are Taurus 3 degrees 20 minutes to 10 degrees. The book gives no further rule, and the app does not use the label.

When is the Sun in Krittika?

Once a year, for about two weeks. Running the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 gives 11 May to 25 May. A Sun in the first few days of that stretch is still in Aries and exalted; after that it is in Taurus.

How long is the Sun dasha at birth for a Krittika Moon?

At most 6 years. The balance is 6 years times the share of Krittika still ahead of the Moon: 5 degrees into the nakshatra leaves 3.75 years.