Ashwini (अश्विनी) is the first of the 27 nakshatras, spanning 0°00' to 13°20' of the nirayana zodiac. It is ruled by Ketu, its deity is Ashwini Kumaras and its symbol is a horse's head. Ashwini nakshatra lies entirely in Mesh rashi (Aries), so every Moon in Ashwini is a Mesh Moon. Children born with the Moon here are traditionally named with the syllables Chu, Che, Cho, La.
Ashwini opens the zodiac and behaves like it: quick, restless and impatient to begin. Its deities are the Ashwini Kumaras, the twin physicians of the gods, which is why the nakshatra is linked to healing and to rapid recovery. Ketu rules it, adding a streak of instinct that acts before it reasons.
Tradition sums Ashwini up as “the healer who arrives first”. A person whose Moon is here begins life in the Ketu mahadasha, and the nakshatra's Deva gana is read as the gentle, giving temperament the texts call divine. Its symbol, a horse's head, and its deity, Ashwini Kumaras, are the images the texts use to describe it. Read these as the nakshatra's character rather than a portrait of a person: the rest of the chart, the Moon's strength and the running dasha shape how it shows.
Each nakshatra is split into four padas of 3°20'. The pada a birth falls in decides the navamsa and, in the naming tradition, the first syllable of the child's name. For Ashwini those syllables are Chu, Che, Cho, La.
The baby name letters calculator marks the syllable for a chosen pada, and the rashi by name calculator works the other way, from a name to its rashi.
Guna Milan reads three of this nakshatra's classifications directly. Its gana is Deva, compared with the partner's for temperament. Its nadi is Aadi (vata): partners who share a nadi score zero on the largest koota, worth 8 of the 36 points. Its yoni animal is the horse, compared for instinctive compatibility. The South Indian nakshatra porutham reads the two birth stars in its own ten tests, and kundli milan gives the full 36-point match.
Only if the Moon was in Ashwini when you were born. The Moon crosses a nakshatra in about a day, so a birth date narrows it to two candidates at best and the birth time settles it. Ashwini nakshatra lies entirely in Mesh rashi (Aries), so every Moon in Ashwini is a Mesh Moon. Find your birth nakshatra, check your Moon sign, or make the full kundli.
Short answers about Ashwini: its lord, rashi, name letters, symbol and gana.
Your own birth star takes a date, a time and a place.
Find my nakshatraKetu is the lord of Ashwini nakshatra. The nakshatra lord decides which Vimshottari mahadasha a person is born into, so someone with the Moon in Ashwini begins life in the Ketu mahadasha. How far the Moon had already travelled through the nakshatra sets how much of that first period is left.
Ashwini nakshatra lies entirely in Mesh rashi (Aries), so every Moon in Ashwini is a Mesh Moon. A nakshatra is 13°20' wide and a rashi 30°, so most nakshatras cross a sign boundary and the pada decides which Moon sign applies. The pada is fixed by the birth time, which is why two people with the same nakshatra can have different rashis.
The name letters for Ashwini nakshatra are Chu, Che, Cho and La, one for each pada in order. Traditional namkaran gives the child a name beginning with the syllable of the pada the Moon occupied at birth, so the pada is needed as well as the nakshatra.
The symbol of Ashwini nakshatra is a horse's head and its presiding deity is Ashwini Kumaras. Tradition sums the nakshatra up as "the healer who arrives first", and the symbol and deity are the starting point for reading its nature. Its yoni animal, the horse, is a separate classification used in marriage matching.
Ashwini is Deva gana and Aadi (vata) nadi, and its yoni animal is the horse. All three are used in Guna Milan, the 36-point marriage match. Nadi carries the most weight at 8 points, and partners who share a nadi score zero on it; gana carries 6 points and yoni 4.
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