Uttara Phalguni Nakshatra: Aryama's star across Leo and Virgo, the Sun dasha and what the texts say

Uttara Phalguni, called Uttara in Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's lists, is the twelfth nakshatra. Its first pada closes Leo and its other three open Virgo: Leo 26 degrees 40 minutes to Virgo 10 degrees. Its Vimshottari lord is the Sun, as for Krittika, its deity is Aryama, and it gives its name to the month Phalguna. If your Moon was in Uttara Phalguni at birth, it sets the 6-year Sun Mahadasha your life began in, gives you the Cow yoni, Manushya 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 Uttara Phalguni, 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 two signs, Leo and Virgo.

Where Uttara Phalguni sits: one pada in Leo, three in Virgo

Eleven nakshatras of 13 degrees 20 minutes reach Leo 26 degrees 40 minutes (Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara, Ch. II, pp. 22-23, for the arithmetic), so Uttara Phalguni's first pada is the last 3 degrees 20 minutes of Leo and its padas 2 to 4 are Virgo 0 to 10 degrees. The sign lord is the Sun for pada 1 and Mercury for padas 2-4. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 51-54 says that in Virgo the first 15 degrees are Mercury's exaltation zone, so all three Virgo padas lie in it; and Sl. 49-50 make Virgo Venus's debilitation sign, deepest at 27 degrees, further on in Chitra. In Leo, pada 1 is past 20 degrees, which by Sl. 51-54 is the Sun's own sign rather than its Mooltrikona.

Leo is fixed and counts its navamsas from Aries, so its 9th is Sagittarius; Virgo is dual and counts from its 5th sign, Capricorn, so its first three are Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 87-88 agrees: eleven nakshatras have passed, 11 divided by 3 leaves 2, times 4 is 8, plus the pada gives the 9th to 12th signs from Mesh. No pada returns to its own sign, so no graha here is Vargottama. See the Navamsa (D9) calculator.

Aryama, the bedstead and the ficus

BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names the twelfth nakshatra deity Aryama, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 100) agrees, describing Uttaraphalguni as two stars in the form of a bedstead (cot), like Purva Phalguni before it. The Saptavimshamsa (D27) calculator uses the BPHS list.

The entry gives the sex as female, the tatthwa as Tejo (fire), the region as the South, the body part as the left hand and the emblem as the ficus tree (Atti); the direction table (p. 90) and body-part table (p. 91) agree. It names a caste, not carried over here. Its associations are mild: ascetics, kings and dancers among the people, and cleanliness, modesty, generosity, learning, virtue and wealth among the qualities, with the company of princes; the articles associated are grains, jaggery, salt and water. One religious label in the list is left out here.

How Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classifies Uttara Phalguni

Two labels point in different directions. The book calls Uttara fixed, one of the four fixed stars with Rohini and the other two Uttaras, and it ties the nature labels to timing: during the period of a planet in a particular star, effects follow its characteristics (p. 91). It also makes Uttara a Laya star whose last two padas are durithamsa. It does not reconcile the two, and this app uses neither. The body-part table, the book says, helps locate disease with the 6th lord, here the left hand; that is its claim, not medical advice. Its yoga list (pp. 28-29) says the fifth yoga, Shobhana, begins at Uttara.

What the texts say about a person born in Uttara Phalguni

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's two descriptions of Uttara Phalguni agree and are favourable. The prose (p. 100) says the person will be generally liked, will earn money by learning and will live in comfort. The translated sloka says the person is generous, compassionate, affectionate towards family and relatives, of good reputation, good-natured, and soft but brave. As for every entry, the effects come fully only if the Moon is powerful (p. 91).

The engine's NAKSHATRA_TRAITS line follows the sloka closely: you tend to be "generous and compassionate, soft-natured yet quietly brave, well-regarded by family". Its comment gives the standing rule for all 27 entries (caste dropped, appearance and spouse lines dropped, harsh verdicts softened); for Uttara Phalguni nothing needed softening.

Saravali names Uttara Phalguni once, in its Raja Yoga chapter: Ch. 35 Sl. 147 says the Sun in Revati, Poorva Phalguni, Uttara Phalguni or Moola, identical with the Ascendant, makes one the head of a country of a hundred yojanas. Here the Sun is in its own nakshatra, in Leo for pada 1 or Virgo for the rest, and in the rising sign, so the birth is within about two hours either side of sunrise (BPHS Ch. 3, translator's addition, on a sign taking about two hours to rise); with the engine's 2026 Sun dates, that is a birth between about 13 and 27 September around sunrise. The app's yoga calculator does not test this clause. Advanced Predictive Astrology puts Uttara Phalguni in the Vata column of its humour table (Vol. II, p. 225) and in its list of stars said to rule over wind (p. 240), a modern grouping reported as such, not medical advice. The same book (p. 83) remarks that when the Ascendant and the Moon share a constellation ruled by one planet, the mind dwells strongly on that star's themes; its example is Swati, and the app does not apply the remark.

An Uttara Phalguni Moon is a Leo Moon in pada 1 and a Virgo Moon in padas 2-4, so Saravali's sign chapter (Ch. 23) applies one way or the other; it is covered on the Leo and Virgo pages and not repeated here. What the nakshatra adds is the pada, and with it the Navamsa that Saravali reads in its next chapter.

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

Saravali Ch. 24 reads the Moon by its Navamsa and the aspecting graha. An Uttara Phalguni 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: Jupiter's Navamsa aspected by Jupiter, good looks, favour and wide fame; aspected by Mercury, a jocular nature and the favour of the powerful; aspected by Mars, skill with weapons and fame; Saturn's Navamsa aspected by Jupiter, devotion to one's own work and greatness. Others are harsh and not repeated.

The Sun, the lord of Uttara Phalguni, and the Sun Mahadasha

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15 begins the Vimshottari cycle at Krittika with the Sun, so the first star of each later cycle of nine is also the Sun's: Krittika, Uttara Phalguni and Uttara Ashadha, each with the shortest Mahadasha, 6 years, and each crossing a sign boundary after its first pada. The engine's nakshatraSubdivision() agrees, and Uttara Phalguni's sub-lord arcs repeat Krittika's, moved to Leo and Virgo. For the Sun as a graha, see the Sun 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 Sun Mahadasha page. BPHS Ch. 48 Sl. 1-8 makes a dasha's content depend on the lord's lordship and placement in your chart. Because the Sun's period is short, most Uttara Phalguni natives are in the Moon's Mahadasha within the first few years.

The sub-periods inside the Sun Mahadasha

In the worked example 0.375 of 6 years, 2.25 years, had passed at birth: through the Sun, Moon, Mars and Rahu sub-periods (2.05 years together) and into Jupiter's. The engine's sub-lord table puts Virgo 1 degree 40 minutes in the Jupiter sub (Virgo 1 degree 13 minutes to 3 degrees), the same answer by construction.

The Sun and Mercury, the star lord and the Virgo sign lord, are on uneven terms but not hostile. The engine's NATURAL_RELATIONS makes Mercury a friend to the Sun and the Sun neutral towards Mercury, and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's table (Ch. III, p. 85) says the same. For pada 1 the sign lord is the Sun itself.

Uttara Phalguni as a dignity for every graha

The engine's Mercury labels follow BPHS here: its DIGNITY table gives Mercury an exaltation end-point at Virgo 15 degrees, citing Ch. 3 Sl. 51-54, with a comment recording that the bound was added because without it every degree of Virgo was labelled Exalted and Mercury's Mooltrikona band could never be reached. So all of Uttara Phalguni's Virgo padas are Exalted for Mercury, and the Mooltrikona band begins later, in Hasta. The Moon, a friend of both sign lords, is in a friendly sign throughout, with about 2.58 rays falling to 2.06. On Saravali's ray scale (Ch. 36 Sl. 3-6, the formula the engine's planetaryRays() uses), worked by hand, Mercury rises from about 6.29 to 6.81 rays through the nakshatra, Venus falls from about 1.18 to 0.66 as it nears its deep fall, the Sun falls from about 1.69 to 1.17, and Saturn rises from about 4.93 to 5.44. BPHS Ch. 50 Sl. 78-83 and Saravali Ch. 36 Sl. 5 have names for those directions: a graha rising towards exaltation is ascending (Rohini, Abhimukha), one falling towards debilitation descending (Avrohini, Paranmukha).

The contrast between labels and rays is sharpest for the nakshatra's own lord. A Sun in pada 1 is in its own sign, a label the engine ranks just below Moolatrikona, yet has only about 1.6 rays, because rays measure distance from deep debilitation at Libra 10 degrees and the end of Leo is only some 40 degrees away. Venus shows the other kind of agreement: debilitated by label in padas 2-4 and close to zero rays. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 59-60 rates a debilitated graha's good effects as nil, and the engine's strength ladder gives debilitation a position value of 0. The two measures answer different questions, and the engine computes both rather than merging them.

The Sun crosses Uttara Phalguni once a year: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters on 13 September and leaves for Hasta on 27 September. With Uttara Phalguni rising, the Ascendant is Leo in pada 1 and Virgo in padas 2-4. For Leo, BPHS Ch. 34 Sl. 29-30 count the Sun among the auspicious grahas; for Virgo, Sl. 31-32 name Mars, Jupiter and the Moon malefics, Mercury and Venus 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 rows for both signs match. The Lagna calculator needs a birth time and place.

The nine sub-lords inside Uttara Phalguni

The engine divides Uttara Phalguni in proportion to the Vimshottari years, starting with the Sun's own, the narrowest arc. The Rahu sub straddles the Leo-Virgo boundary. 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.

Uttara Phalguni in the Kala Chakra and the other dasha systems

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 77 lists Uttaraphalguni among the eight Apsavya nakshatras reckoned like Mrigashira, so it takes Mrigashira's Deha, Jiva and dasha rows (Sl. 78-81); Sl. 60 glosses Deha as body and Jiva as life. Adding the Sl. 84 Kala Chakra years along those rows gives 86, 83, 85 and 100. Uttara Phalguni's Navamsas, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces, carry Sl. 89's figures 100, 85, 83 and 86 (the same as Mesh, Vrishabh, Mithun and Kark, of which they are the 9th signs), so the rows match in reverse pada order, as they do for every member of Mrigashira's group. The app computes the Kala Chakra from these rows, but the text's span-of-life use of the totals is not repeated.

Ashtottari (Sl. 17-20) gives Uttara Phalguni to the Moon, third of its three stars after Magha and Purva Phalguni, in a 15-year dasha shared 5 years a star. For a Moon 5 degrees into Uttara Phalguni, 10 years for the first two stars plus 0.375 x 5 (about 1.9) have expired, leaving about 3.1 years of the Moon's Ashtottari dasha at birth. Shastihayani (Sl. 40-41) lists U.Phalguni under the Moon too, 6 years there. The app computes both with a balance and dated periods: Ashtottari by the sloka's own rule, Shastihayani by the published rule "as in Vimshottari" from outside BPHS (Sanjay Rath), since the sloka gives no balance rule.

The six systems the engine builds appear in the alternate dashas calculator. For an Uttara Phalguni Moon: Shodshottari (from Pushya) Ketu, 15 years; Dwadashottari (birth star to Revati) Moon, 21; Panchottari (from Anuradha) Mercury, 13; Shatabdik (from Revati) Mars, 20; Chaturashiti-sama (from Swati) Mercury, 12; Dwisaptati-sama (from Mula) Jupiter, 9. These are where Uttara Phalguni stops matching Krittika, whose Vimshottari timing it repeats exactly. BPHS ties each system to a kind of chart, and the calculator shows which apply.

Uttara Phalguni in Ashtakoot matching

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

Chitra, two stars on, is Uttara Phalguni's Yoni enemy, so an Uttara Phalguni-Chitra pair scores 0 of 4 on Yoni. The engine's comment calls these conventional tables, 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 Ardra for Uttara Phalguni; the app uses neither.

Uttara Phalguni in muhurat

Uttara Phalguni is among the most favoured nakshatras in the engine's muhurat finder, on five of six lists: Marriage, Business launch, Property purchase, New job and Investment; only Travel leaves it out. Rohini and Uttara Ashadha have the same five, Hasta has five with Travel instead of Property purchase, and Anuradha is on all six. A listed nakshatra adds 16 points to the window's score, an unlisted one subtracts 6, and scoreMoment() then adds the Moon's house from your chart (+14 favoured, -20 for the 6th, 8th or 12th), the tithi (-15 if avoided, +5 otherwise), the fortnight (+7 bright, -4 dark), a favoured weekday (+7), Rahu Kaal overlap (-25) and your numerology personal day, from a base of 34, capped at 0 and 100.

The lists cite no source, and no book in the corpus prints per-activity lists. The pattern does line up with Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's labels for these two stars: Rohini, Uttara Phalguni and Uttara Ashadha, the three stars with exactly these five lists, are three of its four fixed stars, and all are favoured for the settling activities but not for travel. That is agreement of outcome, not a citation for the lists.

From the engine's Moon positions, sampled every ten minutes, the next passes through Uttara Phalguni are 5 November 2026 03:40 to 6 November 04:00 IST, 2 December 09:00 to 3 December 09:30 IST, and 29 December 15:50 to 30 December 15:40 IST, each about 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 Uttara Phalguni 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 Leo 26 degrees 40 minutes, the Leo-Virgo line, or Virgo 10 degrees could honestly be on either side; at the Leo-Virgo line the Moon sign changes along with the pada. The ayanamsa moves every boundary together; see why apps disagree on your nakshatra. The Moon sign calculator shows sign and nakshatra together.

Uttara Phalguni between Purva Phalguni and Hasta

Before Uttara Phalguni is Purva Phalguni, Venus's star, its twin in Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's drawings (both a cot) and body table (right and left hands); after it is Hasta, the Moon's star, wholly in Virgo, which holds Mercury's deepest exaltation. Uttara Phalguni closes the Makha-Pubba-Uttara triad as its Laya member and opens the run of six fire (Tejo) stars.

Which planet rules Uttara Phalguni nakshatra?

The Sun, with a 6-year Mahadasha, in the Vimshottari scheme of BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15. The sign lord is the Sun for pada 1 (Leo) and Mercury for padas 2-4 (Virgo).

Who is the deity of Uttara Phalguni?

Aryama, in both BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 and Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 100).

What is the symbol of Uttara Phalguni?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara describes two stars in the form of a bedstead, represented by the ficus tree. The engine's Yoni animal is the Cow, shared with Uttara Bhadrapada.

Is Uttara Phalguni in Leo or Virgo?

Both: pada 1 is Leo 26 degrees 40 minutes to 30 degrees; padas 2-4 are Virgo 0 to 10 degrees.

Is Mercury exalted in Uttara Phalguni?

In padas 2-4, yes: they lie in Virgo's first 15 degrees, which BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 51-54 makes Mercury's exaltation zone, and the engine labels them Exalted. In pada 1, in Leo, Mercury is in a friend's sign.

What is the gana, yoni and nadi of Uttara Phalguni?

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

Is Uttara Phalguni good for marriage?

In this app's muhurat engine it is on the Marriage list and four others, all except Travel, worth 16 points on the nakshatra factor. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classes it as a fixed star.

What are the durithamsa padas of Uttara Phalguni?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara calls the 3rd and 4th quarters of every Laya star durithamsa, believed unfavourable; for Uttara these are Virgo 3 degrees 20 minutes to 10 degrees. The book gives no further rule, and the app does not use the label.

Which month is named after Uttara Phalguni?

Phalguna. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. II, p. 24) names each lunar month after the star of its full Moon and pairs Phalguna with Uttara-Phalguni, not Purva; with Magha it forms the Sishira season.

Which Kala Chakra group is Uttara Phalguni in?

The Apsavya group reckoned like Mrigashira (BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 77). Its rows total 86, 83, 85 and 100 years, Sl. 89's figures for its Navamsas in reverse pada order. The app computes the Kala Chakra from these rows.

When is the Sun in Uttara Phalguni?

Once a year for about two weeks: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters on 13 September and leaves for Hasta on 27 September.

How long is the Sun dasha at birth for an Uttara Phalguni Moon?

At most 6 years: 6 times the share of Uttara Phalguni still ahead of the Moon. 5 degrees in leaves 3.75 years.