A rāśi daśā is not a planet daśā
Vimśottarī and its relatives are graha daśās: each period belongs to a planet, and you read the planet. The Jaimini systems on this page are rāśi daśās: each period belongs to a sign, and for the length of that period the sign functions as the Lagna. You read the whole chart from it.
That difference changes what the technique can do. A planet daśā tells you which significator is active. A sign daśā tells you where you are standing — which house of your chart has become the first house, and therefore what every other house now means relative to it. During a period whose sign is the 6th from your Lagna, the 6th house is your new self, and the ordinary reading of the chart reorganises around that.
The practical consequence is that rāśi daśās are read by counting houses from the daśā sign. The 10th from it is the career of that period, the 7th its relationships, the 4th its home. This is why they pair so well with Vimśottarī rather than competing with it: one names the actor, the other names the stage.
What Dṛg daśā is for
Nārāyaṇa daśā answers "what am I doing". Sudāśā answers "what is coming to me". Dṛg daśā answers a third question that the other two cannot: when does the direction change from outside my own effort?
The events it times are recognisable once you know to look for them: meeting a teacher, receiving initiation, a religious turn, a period of unusual clarity about what one is for, the moment a life reorients around something it had not previously contained. These are not achievements and they are not gifts of fortune — they are changes of orientation.
The technique is correspondingly narrow. It is not a general-purpose daśā and it will not tell you about your career or your marriage. Used for what it is for, it is precise.
How the sequence is built
The sequence is constructed from the 9th, 10th and 11th houses from the Lagna — and the choice of those three is the technique's whole argument. The 9th is dharma, the guru and grace; the 10th is what one does in the world; the 11th is fulfilment and what is gained. Guidance enters a life through those three doors.
Each of the three is taken with its trinal group — the sign and the two signs in trine to it — which gives nine of the twelve signs, ordered by group. The daśā then runs through that sequence.
Period lengths follow the rāśi daśā principle: count from the sign to its lord, forward for an odd-footed sign and backward for an even-footed one, with dignity adjusting the result. The balance of the first period is taken from the degree of the Lagna within its sign — a Lagna late in its sign gives a short opening period, which is why an accurate birth time shifts every subsequent date in the sequence.
How to read a Dṛg period
Read the daśā sign for what it holds and what aspects it, but weight two things above the rest: Jupiter and Ketu. Jupiter in or aspecting the daśā sign points to guidance arriving through a teacher, a tradition, or formal knowledge. Ketu points to it arriving through detachment — the door opening because something else closed.
Then check what the daśā sign is from the natal 9th house. A Dṛg period in a sign trinal to your 9th is the clearest form of the technique; a period in a sign that is the 6th or 8th from your 9th shows guidance arriving through difficulty, which is common and not a bad reading.
Confirm against the Viṁśāṁśa. A Dṛg period that lines up with activation in the D-20 is a genuine turning point in practice; one that does not is usually a passing interest rather than a change of direction.
Why every Dṛg date moves with the birth time
The sequence of signs is built from whole houses and is stable, but the dates are not. The balance of the very first period is taken from how far the Lagna has advanced into its sign — a Lagna at 2° gives almost a full opening period, one at 28° gives a stub — and every subsequent period is pushed along by whatever that first one turns out to be. So a twenty-minute birth-time error leaves the order of signs untouched and shifts all the dates in the sequence together, typically by months. Treat the order as reliable and the dates as needing a rectified time.
How this is computed
Positions come from an astronomical ephemeris, converted to the sidereal zodiac on the Lahiri (Citrapakṣa) ayanāṁśa and computed by our own Parāśara engine — no pre-written results, and no language model anywhere near a number. Where the classical texts disagree, this page names the convention we follow instead of quietly picking one.