Pushya Nakshatra: Brihaspati's star in Cancer, Jupiter's exaltation point and the Saturn dasha

Pushya is the eighth nakshatra, Cancer 3 degrees 20 minutes to Cancer 16 degrees 40 minutes, wholly inside the Moon's own sign. It holds Jupiter's deepest exaltation point, its classical deity is Jupiter under the name Brihaspati or Jiva, and yet its Vimshottari lord is Saturn. It is also a starting point twice over: BPHS counts the Shodshottari dasha from it, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara begins the cycle of the 27 almanac yogas at it. If your Moon was in Pushya at birth, it sets the 19-year Saturn Mahadasha your life began in, your Sheep yoni, Deva gana and Madhya nadi, and your Moon's sub-lord. The nakshatra calculator shows yours.

This page sets out what the corpus books say about Pushya, by chapter, sloka or page, beside what the app's 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, Cancer, Karka Rashi.

Where Pushya sits, and Jupiter's deepest exaltation

Seven nakshatras of 13 degrees 20 minutes reach Cancer 3 degrees 20 minutes, so Pushya runs from there to Cancer 16 degrees 40 minutes (Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara, Ch. II, pp. 22-23, for the arithmetic). All four padas are in Cancer. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50 makes Cancer Jupiter's exaltation sign with the deepest point at 5 degrees, inside Pushya's first pada, and makes it Mars's debilitation sign, deepest at 28 degrees, which lies further on in Ashlesha. So within Pushya, Jupiter is exalted throughout and at its peak in pada 1, and Mars is debilitated throughout.

Cancer is movable, so the engine counts its navamsas from Cancer itself; Pushya's padas are Cancer's 2nd to 5th navamsas, Leo to Scorpio. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 87-88 agrees from the nakshatra count: seven have passed, 7 divided by 3 leaves 1, times 4 is 4, plus the pada gives the 5th to 8th signs from Mesh. None is Cancer, so no graha in Pushya is Vargottama. See the Navamsa (D9) calculator.

Brihaspati, the arrow and the peepal tree

BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names the eighth nakshatra deity Jiva, a name of Jupiter. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 97) agrees, naming Brihaspati, and describes Pushyami as a single star in the form of an arrow. The Saptavimshamsa (D27) calculator uses the BPHS list. So Pushya is a Saturn-ruled star whose deity is Jupiter, in the sign where Jupiter is exalted.

The entry gives Pushya's sex as male, its tatthwa as Jala (water), its region as the East and its body part as the face, and says it is represented by the peepal tree (Asvaththa); the direction table (p. 90) and body-part table (p. 91) agree. It names a caste, which is not carried over here or by the engine. Its list of associations is unusually mild: ministers or rulers, sadhus, traders dealing in wet crops such as rice, sugarcane, wheat and barley, and a fondness for singing and dancing, parties, rituals and flowers.

How Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classifies Pushya

The book's yoga chapter gives Pushya a structural role. Its list of the 27 almanac yogas (pp. 28-29) pairs each with a starting nakshatra, and the list begins: Vishkambha, Pushyami. The text then explains its "yoga point" method: add 3 signs 3 degrees 20 minutes to the sum of the Sun's and Moon's longitudes, because the first yoga commences with the nakshatra Pushyami, located in the fourth rasi at 3 degrees 20 minutes. So the whole yoga cycle is anchored at the start of Pushya. That is a statement about the almanac's arithmetic, and the book does not transfer Vishkambha's traits to Pushya births. This app's Panchang does not compute the 27 yogas.

The book's "light" label is tied to timing in one sentence: during the period of a planet situated in a particular star, effects will be felt according to these characteristics (p. 91). In its terms the dasha of any graha placed in Pushya takes a light quality. The body-part table, it says, helps locate a disease when read with the 6th lord; for Pushya that is the face. Both are the book's claims, not medical advice; the app uses neither.

What the texts say about a person born in Pushya

Pushya's two descriptions in Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara agree and are among the most favourable in the chapter. The prose (p. 97) says the person born in Pushya will have control over desires, be generally liked, learned in the shastras, rich and fond of acts of charity. The translated sloka says the person is fortunate, pleasant in appearance, devoted to parents, dutiful and well-mannered, honoured, and possesses fine vehicles and wealth. As for every entry, the effects come fully only if the Moon is powerful (p. 91), and a Moon in Pushya is in its own sign.

The engine's NAKSHATRA_TRAITS line follows the sloka: you tend to be "fortunate and dutiful, devoted to family, and well-regarded for good conduct". The table's standing omissions (caste dropped, appearance and spouse lines dropped, harsh verdicts softened) remove only the appearance clause here.

Saravali's Raja Yoga chapter (Ch. 35) names Pushyami twice. Sl. 163 lists the Moon in Pushyami, Vargottama, 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. "Emperor" and "ruler" are the classical grading of prominence, reported as the text gives them. The app's yoga calculator does not test these clauses. A Pushya Moon is also a Cancer Moon, so Saravali's sign chapter (Ch. 23) applies; it is covered on the Cancer page and not repeated here.

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

Saravali Ch. 24 reads the Moon by its Navamsa and the aspecting graha. A Pushya Moon is in the Sun's Navamsa in pada 1 (Leo, Sl. 13-15), Mercury's in pada 2 (Virgo, Sl. 7-9), Venus's in pada 3 (Libra, Sl. 4-6) and Mars's in pada 4 (Scorpio, Sl. 1-3). Among the milder readings: Leo Navamsa aspected by Mars, gold, wealth, fame and royal honour; aspected by Jupiter, an army chief or a king; Mercury's Navamsa aspected by Saturn, skill in the shastras and poetry; Venus's aspected by Venus, comfort in clothes, food and drink; Mars's aspected by Jupiter, fame and honour from the learned. Other lines are harsh and not repeated. By Sl. 22-24 none of Pushya's padas is Vargottama or the Moon's own Navamsa, so every reading applies at the minor level unless the Navamsa lord is stronger than the sign lord. The app does not compute Ch. 24.

Saturn, the lord of Pushya, and the 19-year Mahadasha

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15 runs the Vimshottari cycle from Krittika: Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, then Saturn with 19 years, so Pushya, sixth in the cycle, belongs to Saturn. The engine's nakshatraSubdivision() agrees. Saturn also rules Anuradha and Uttara Bhadrapada. For Saturn as a graha, see Saturn in Vedic astrology.

The balance rule is BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 16. Saturn's period is the second longest, so a Pushya Moon at the start of the nakshatra begins with nearly 19 years of Saturn. Your dates are in the Vimshottari Dasha calculator; the period is described on the Saturn Mahadasha page. BPHS Ch. 48 Sl. 1-8 makes a dasha's content depend on the lord's house lordship and placement in your chart.

The sub-periods inside the Saturn Mahadasha

In the worked example 0.375 of 19 years, 7.125 years, had passed at birth: through Saturn's, Mercury's and Ketu's sub-periods (6.81 years together) and into Venus's. The engine's sub-lord table puts Cancer 8 degrees 20 minutes in the Venus sub (8 degrees 07 minutes to 10 degrees 20 minutes). The Moon's sub-lord at birth is always the Antar Dasha lord at birth, since both are cut in the same proportions.

Saturn and the Moon, Pushya's star lord and sign lord, are not on equal terms. In the engine's NATURAL_RELATIONS table the Moon has no enemies and counts Saturn as neither friend nor enemy, while Saturn counts the Moon as an enemy; Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's table (Ch. III, p. 85) says the same. Worked from Saturn's Mooltrikona, Aquarius, by BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 55, the Moon's only sign, Cancer, is the 6th from it, not a friend position, which gives the same result.

Pushya as a dignity for every graha

Running the engine's dignityOf() anywhere in Pushya, with natural relationships only, gives: Sun, friendly sign; Moon, own sign; Mars, debilitated; Mercury, enemy sign; Jupiter, exalted; Venus, enemy sign; Saturn, enemy sign. Saturn, the nakshatra's own lord, is therefore in an enemy's sign whenever it transits or occupies Pushya.

Saravali's rays (Ch. 36 Sl. 3-6, the formula the engine's planetaryRays() uses) show Jupiter at its peak here. Worked by hand, Jupiter has about 6.94 rays at the start of Pushya, exactly 7 at Cancer 5 degrees, and about 6.55 at the end. Mars, approaching its deep debilitation at Cancer 28 degrees, falls from about 0.96 to 0.44. BPHS Ch. 50 Sl. 78-83 describes the dasha of a graha in deep exaltation and fully strong as bringing great gains and glory, and of one merely in its exaltation sign as opulent with some chance of illness; a Jupiter near Cancer 5 degrees is the textbook case, though the text requires all six kinds of strength for the first.

The other grahas, worked the same way by hand: the Moon in its own sign has about 4.65 rays at the start of Pushya and 4.14 at the end; Saturn, the nakshatra's lord, about 2.85 rising to 3.37 as it moves away from its debilitation point in Aries; Mercury about 4.2 to 4.7; the Sun about 3.76 to 3.24. The engine notes that it computes this base figure only and does not apply Saravali's corrections in Sl. 7-9.

The Sun crosses Pushya once a year: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters on 20 July and leaves for Ashlesha on 3 August. With Pushya rising, the Ascendant is Cancer, and BPHS Ch. 34 Sl. 27-28 names Mars, Jupiter and the Moon as auspicious for it, Mars as able to give a full Yoga, and Saturn and the Sun as killers who act according to their associations; the engine's YOGA_KARAKA_BY_LAGNA row for Cancer matches. So for a Cancer Ascendant the lord of the rising nakshatra, Saturn, is classed as a killer. The Lagna calculator needs a birth time and place.

The nine sub-lords inside Pushya

The engine divides Pushya in proportion to the Vimshottari years, beginning with Saturn's own arc. Jupiter's deepest exaltation at Cancer 5 degrees falls in the Saturn sub. The sub-lord calculator reports these for every graha.

Sub-lords are far more sensitive to birth time than padas; see the sub-lord and birth time.

Pushya as the starting star of Shodshottari

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 23-26 describe Shodshottari, a 116-year system recommended for a day birth in the dark fortnight or a night birth in the bright fortnight (or by the Hora of the Ascendant), and its count begins here: count the nakshatras from Pushya to the birth nakshatra, divide by 8, and the remainder gives the starting lord in the order Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ketu, Moon, Mercury, Venus, with 11 to 18 years. For a Pushya Moon the count is 1, so Shodshottari begins with the Sun's 11 years. The engine's own comment uses exactly this case as its worked example: a Moon at 100 degrees sidereal is halfway through Pushya, so the Shodshottari balance is 11 x 0.5 = 5.5 years. The alternate dashas calculator shows whether the condition applies to your chart.

The engine's test for that condition is spelled out in kundaliEngine.js. It reads the paksha at the birth instant and whether the birth was by day, and separately the Hora of the Ascendant; Shodshottari is marked as applying if either clause is met, as not applying if both clearly fail, and as unknown if the birth place was not resolved, because day or night cannot then be decided. Without an Ascendant it gives no verdict at all. So for a Pushya Moon the first lord is always the Sun, but whether Shodshottari is the right system for the chart is a separate question the calculator answers from the time and place.

The other five systems the engine builds give, for a Pushya Moon: Dwadashottari (birth star to Revati) Mercury, 13 years; Panchottari (from Anuradha) Venus, 16; Shatabdik (from Revati) Moon, 5; Chaturashiti-sama (from Swati) Saturn, 12; Dwisaptati-sama (from Mula) Sun, 9. Ashtottari (Sl. 17-20) puts Pushya third in the Sun's group of four that begins at Ardra, and Shastihayani (Sl. 40-41) lists Pushya under Mars (Mangal), 10 years; the engine builds both, Ashtottari in full (Abhijit read from the Moon's longitude per Sl. 21-22, every period dated) and Shastihayani with a balance at birth and dated periods by the rule "as in Vimshottari", which BPHS does not state and the app takes from a published reference outside it (Sanjay Rath).

Ashtottari can still be worked by hand from Sl. 21-22, which give each nakshatra a quarter of a malefic's dasha and tell you to find the balance as for Vimshottari. The Sun's Ashtottari dasha is 6 years, so each of its four stars carries 1.5. Pushya is the third, after Ardra and Punarvasu. For a Moon 5 degrees into Pushya, 1.5 + 1.5 + 0.375 x 1.5, about 3.56 years, have expired, leaving about 2.44 years of the Sun's Ashtottari dasha at birth. That is a literal reading of the slokas; the engine computes the same balance from the exact longitude and dates every period.

In the Kala Chakra, BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 65 names Pushya among the five nakshatras whose padas take Bharani's Deha, Jiva and dasha signs. Adding the Kala Chakra years of Sl. 84 along Bharani's four rows gives 100, 85, 83 and 86, and Sl. 89 assigns exactly those figures to the Navamsas Leo, Virgo, Libra and Scorpio, which are Pushya's padas in order. So Pushya's rows pass the same arithmetic check Bharani's do. The app computes the Kala Chakra Dasha from these rows, with its balance and dates; the text's span-of-life use of the totals is not repeated.

Pushya in Ashtakoot matching

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

The engine's comment says these are the conventional tables, kept because no book in the corpus 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. For Nadi, Advanced Predictive Astrology's Pitta column (Vol. II, p. 225) is exactly the engine's Madhya group; the book uses it for health tendencies, reported as its view, not medical advice. 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 Bharani for Pushya; the app does not use it.

Advanced Predictive Astrology uses a Pushyami birth once more, as the worked example for a modern counting rule in its chapter on good and bad times (Vol. II, p. 126): it counts stars from the birth star and names the lords of certain counted stars as the periods to watch for a household mishap. The rule cites no classical source, is one author's practice, and is not used by this app; it is mentioned only because it is the corpus's other explicit reference to Pushya.

Pushya in muhurat

In the engine's muhurat finder, Pushya is on four of six activity lists: Business launch, Travel, New job and Investment; it is not on Marriage or Property purchase. A listed nakshatra gains a window 16 points and an unlisted one costs 6; tithi, paksha, the Moon's house from your chart, the weekday, Rahu Kaal and your numerology day are added on top. The lists cite no source. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's labelling of Pushya as light, alongside Ashwini and Hasta, is consistent with all three appearing together on the Business launch, Travel and New job lists, but it is not a citation for them.

From the engine's Moon positions, sampled every ten minutes, the next passes through Pushya are 1 November 2026 05:50 to 2 November 04:40 IST, 28 November 13:00 to 29 November 11:10 IST, and 25 December 23:00 to 26 December 20:20 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 Pushya in your own chart

The Moon's nakshatra needs the date and a time, not the place. The Moon crosses a pada in about six hours, and its longitude in this app is good to about 0.1-0.3 degrees, as the methodology page explains. A Moon within a few tenths of a degree of Cancer 3 degrees 20 minutes or 16 degrees 40 minutes may honestly be in Punarvasu or Ashlesha, which changes the first Mahadasha from Saturn to Jupiter or Mercury. The ayanamsa moves every boundary together; see why apps disagree on your nakshatra. The Moon sign calculator shows sign and nakshatra together.

Pushya between Punarvasu and Ashlesha

Before Pushya is Punarvasu, Jupiter's own star, whose last pada opens Cancer; after it comes Ashlesha, ruled by Mercury, which closes Cancer at a Gandanta seam and holds Mars's deepest fall. Pushya is the Sthithi member of that triad. It shares its Sheep yoni with Krittika and its Deva gana and Eastern direction with Punarvasu.

Which planet rules Pushya nakshatra?

Saturn, with a 19-year Mahadasha, in the Vimshottari scheme of BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15. Its sign lord is the Moon, because all of Pushya is in Cancer.

Who is the deity of Pushya?

Jupiter: BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names Jiva, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 97) names Brihaspati.

What is the symbol of Pushya?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara describes a single star in the form of an arrow, represented by the peepal tree. The engine's Yoni animal for Pushya is the Sheep, shared with Krittika.

Is Jupiter exalted in Pushya?

Yes: all of Pushya is in Cancer, Jupiter's exaltation sign, and the deepest point, Cancer 5 degrees, is in Pushya's first pada (BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50). The engine labels Jupiter exalted anywhere in Cancer.

Why does BPHS count Shodshottari from Pushya?

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 24-26 simply names Pushya as the starting star; it gives no reason. A Pushya Moon therefore always starts Shodshottari with the Sun, 11 years.

What is the gana, yoni and nadi of Pushya?

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

Is Pushya good for starting a business?

In this app's muhurat engine it is on the Business launch, Travel, New job and Investment lists, worth 16 points on the nakshatra factor, but not on Marriage or Property purchase. It is one factor among several.

What does Pushya have to do with the 27 yogas of the almanac?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. II, pp. 28-29) says the first yoga, Vishkambha, commences at Pushyami, at Cancer 3 degrees 20 minutes, which is why its yoga-point method adds 3 signs 3 degrees 20 minutes. This app does not compute the 27 yogas.

Which Kala Chakra group is Pushya in?

The Savya group reckoned like Bharani (BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 65), with Chitra, Purva Ashadha and Uttara Bhadrapada. Its four rows total 100, 85, 83 and 86 years, matching Sl. 89 for its Navamsas.

When is the Sun in Pushya?

Once a year for about two weeks: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters Pushya on 20 July and Ashlesha on 3 August.

How long is the Saturn dasha at birth for a Pushya Moon?

Up to 19 years: 19 times the share of Pushya still ahead of the Moon. 5 degrees in leaves 11.875 years.