--- title: "Shravana Nakshatra: All Four Padas, Lord and Meaning" slug: "shravana-nakshatra" canonical_url: "https://mahadasha.com/shravana-nakshatra" description: "Shravana Nakshatra spans 10°00' to 23°20' Capricorn under the Moon, deity Vishnu. All four padas, the ten-year dasha it opens, and why the symbol is an ear." published_date: "2026-08-04 10:00:00" modified_date: "2026-08-04 10:00:00" author: "Pawan Acharya" keywords: "shravana nakshatra, shravana nakshatra padas, shravana nakshatra pada 1, shravana nakshatra female, shravana nakshatra male, shravana nakshatra marriage, shravana nakshatra career, shravana birth star" locale: "en" --- # Shravana Nakshatra: All Four Padas, Lord and Meaning > Shravana Nakshatra is Altair, the star of the ear, ruled by the Moon with Vishnu as its deity. Its four padas, its Moon dasha, and the tradition of learning by listening. # Shravana Nakshatra: All Four Padas, Lord and Meaning Shravana Nakshatra occupies 10°00' to 23°20' Capricorn and is ruled by the Moon. Its deity is Vishnu, and its symbol is an ear, sometimes given as three footprints. In the sky it is Altair with the two stars flanking it, a distinctive line that is easy to find on a summer evening. The name comes from *shru*, to hear. This is the nakshatra of listening. ## Why an ear, and why three footprints The Vedas are *shruti*, meaning that which was heard. For most of Indian history the entire tradition passed by ear from a teacher to a student, with no text involved anywhere in the chain, and the accuracy of the transmission depended on nothing except whether the student was listening properly on the day. An entire civilisation's knowledge rested on the quality of attention that people paid to sound. Shravana is that faculty. Not hearing, which is passive. Listening, which is work. The distinction matters more than it sounds. Two people sit through the same lecture and one of them can reproduce it a week later while the other retains a general impression and the colour of the room, and nothing about the sound reaching their ears was different. What differed was the attention. That difference is the entire subject of this nakshatra, and it is the reason a tradition with no books survived four thousand years without losing its material. The three footprints are Vishnu's, from the Vamana story: the dwarf who asked a demon king for three paces of land, was granted them with some amusement, and then crossed the earth, the sky and the underworld in three strides. It is the image of something small that turns out to contain everything, which is a fair description of what happens when somebody actually listens to you for two minutes. People born here are excellent listeners and disproportionately well-informed. They know things. They pick up what was said at the edge of a conversation, they remember it, and they connect it to something else six months later. They also tend to be gossips. Same faculty, no filter. All four padas sit in Capricorn, so Saturn is the rashi lord while the Moon rules the star. A cold, structural sign under the most receptive graha in the system, which is why Shravana natives absorb everything and give very little of it back until asked directly. ## Where Abhijit ends The twenty-eighth nakshatra, Abhijit, runs from 6°40' to 10°53'20" Capricorn. Most of it lies in [Uttara Ashadha](https://mahadasha.com/uttara-ashadha-nakshatra) 's fourth pada, but the last 53 arcminutes fall inside Shravana's opening degrees. That fragment is small, roughly one fifteenth of the nakshatra, and it means a planet in the first degree or so of Shravana sits in both Shravana and Abhijit at once. Muhurat practitioners who use Abhijit treat that window as unusually favourable. It is a minor point and worth knowing precisely rather than vaguely, because most sources either ignore Abhijit entirely or place it wrongly, usually by giving it a full 13°20' arc that it has never had in any classical reckoning. ## All four Shravana Nakshatra padas in detail The padas run Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer. ### Pada 1: 10°00' to 13°20' Capricorn, Aries navamsa Mars takes the navamsa, and the first fraction of this pada lies inside Abhijit. Syllable *Ju*. The most assertive quarter, and the one where what has been heard gets acted on. Advocacy, journalism, management, and campaigning of every kind. It is the least patient pada in an otherwise patient star and the most likely to repeat something it should have kept quiet. ### Pada 2: 13°20' to 16°40' Capricorn, Taurus navamsa Venus takes the navamsa. Syllable *Je*. The most settled quarter. Music sits here more than anywhere else in the zodiac, since Venus and an ear in an earth sign is close to a definition of it. Also finance, property, luxury trade and hospitality. This pada accumulates quietly and is comfortable being underestimated. ### Pada 3: 16°40' to 20°00' Capricorn, Gemini navamsa Mercury takes the navamsa. Syllable *Jo*. Listening turned into transmission. Teaching, writing, broadcasting, translation, publishing, and consultancy. This is the most articulate quarter and the most commercially adaptable, and it is where the star's reputation for fame usually comes from. It is also the most likely to talk instead of listening. ### Pada 4: 20°00' to 23°20' Capricorn, Cancer navamsa The Moon rules both the star and the navamsa. Syllable *Gha*. The most receptive and most devotional quarter. Counselling, care work, religious life, and the kind of attention that heals people simply by being fully given. Doubled Moon under Saturn gives this pada real emotional depth and a tendency to absorb other people's difficulties without noticing it has happened. ## Ten years of Moon A Moon in Shravana opens life in [Moon Mahadasha](https://mahadasha.com/moon-mahadasha) , ten years. [Rohini](https://mahadasha.com/rohini-nakshatra) and [Hasta](https://mahadasha.com/hasta-nakshatra) are the other Moon stars. A Chandra childhood is emotionally attentive, usually with a close relationship to the mother. For Shravana it tends to mean an early environment full of talk, stories or music, from which the child absorbed a great deal without being formally taught any of it. Seven years of Mars follow around age ten, and then eighteen of Rahu. Check the balance with the [dasha calculator](https://mahadasha.com/dasha-calculator) . ## The syllables Shravana gives a child Shravana's four are *Ju*, *Je*, *Jo* and *Gha*. The first three complete the *J* run that [Uttara Ashadha](https://mahadasha.com/uttara-ashadha-nakshatra) began, and the fourth breaks to *Gh*, which continues into [Dhanishta](https://mahadasha.com/dhanishta-nakshatra) 's *G* set. The three-to-one shape means an approximate birth time usually lands safely on *J*. Only a child born in the final 3°20' takes the odd syllable, and *Gha* is also [Ardra](https://mahadasha.com/ardra-nakshatra) 's second pada, which is a reminder that syllables repeat around the wheel and the chart is what settles it. ## When Shravana is active in a chart The Moon needs 27.3 days to return to Shravana, and lingers a day when it does. Saturn, which rules the rashi, takes thirteen months every twenty-nine and a half years, and those passages tend to be when the listening finally turns into a position rather than a habit. The Sun crosses in about thirteen days in late January. Jupiter's five-month crossing every twelve years is the one that most reliably converts what somebody knows into what they are known for. ## Work that suits Shravana Anything built on receiving information accurately. Teaching, journalism, broadcasting, translation, publishing, counselling and therapy, consultancy, market research, and the law in its advisory rather than combative form. The ear connects directly to music, audiology, speech therapy and languages, all of which appear in the classical lists. Vishnu's presence adds religious teaching and scholarship. Shravana is Chara, a movable nakshatra, so muhurat practice favours it for travel, vehicles and anything that should not be permanent. ## Marriage, gana and compatibility Shravana is Deva gana, Vanara yoni, Antya nadi. The monkey yoni is shared with [Purva Ashadha](https://mahadasha.com/purva-ashadha-nakshatra) , and its natural enemy is the ram, which puts [Krittika](https://mahadasha.com/krittika-nakshatra) and [Pushya](https://mahadasha.com/pushya-nakshatra) at a disadvantage. ### Which nakshatras actually match Shravana Shravana's share of the fixed portion: Tara 3, the monkey yoni 4, Deva gana 6, Antya nadi 8. Twenty-one of thirty-six. Shravana's best partners on those 21 are [Uttara Phalguni](https://mahadasha.com/uttara-phalguni-nakshatra) and [Purva Ashadha](https://mahadasha.com/purva-ashadha-nakshatra) , both at 18. Purva Ashadha is the same-yoni pairing, monkey with monkey, for the full four points, and both partners avoid Shravana's Antya nadi. The weakest is [Magha](https://mahadasha.com/magha-nakshatra) at 3 of 21: shared Antya nadi removes eight and Deva against Rakshasa removes five of six. Fifteen further points depend on both charts rather than both stars: see [Kundali matching](https://mahadasha.com/kundali-matching) . ## Reading Shravana for planets other than the Moon The Moon in its own nakshatra is receptive and well-informed, and in the fourth pada it rules the navamsa as well, which is the most emotionally attuned placement in the star. Mercury in the third pada is an outstanding communicator. Venus in the second is genuinely musical. Saturn in Shravana is in its own sign and produces the patient scholar who publishes at sixty. Jupiter here is a teacher rather than a preacher. Mars is the misfit, since this star listens and Mars does not. Rahu in Shravana is associated with fame that arrives through media rather than through achievement. ## The difficult side of Shravana Absorbing everything. A person who listens well collects other people's problems, opinions and anxieties, and does it without any of the parties involved quite noticing that a transfer has taken place, so Shravana natives commonly reach their forties carrying a substantial amount of material that was never theirs and cannot easily be handed back. The fourth pada does this most. The second difficulty is the one the texts name directly: this star hears things and repeats them. Gossip is listening without discretion, and the same attentiveness that makes Shravana valuable makes it dangerous to confide in when it is careless. The remedy is the Moon's, and the practical version is to decide what you are not going to say before you are asked. Shravana's opening 53 arcminutes still belong to Abhijit, a level of precision only a chart can settle. Run the [birth chart calculator](https://mahadasha.com/birth-chart-calculator) , then read the [27-nakshatra guide](https://mahadasha.com/27-nakshatras-in-vedic-astrology) . One more consequence of the Moon ruling a Capricorn star. Saturn's sign is the least emotionally expressive in the zodiac and the Moon is the most emotionally receptive graha in the system, so Shravana takes in a great deal and shows almost none of it. That gap is where the star's reputation for wisdom comes from, and also where its loneliness does. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why is Shravana Nakshatra symbolised by an ear? The name comes from *shru*, to hear, and the Vedas are *shruti*, that which was heard. The entire tradition was transmitted orally for centuries, so accurate listening was the mechanism by which knowledge survived at all. ### Which star is Shravana Nakshatra? Altair, Alpha Aquilae, with Beta and Gamma Aquilae flanking it. The three form a short straight line that is one of the easier asterisms to identify, and the tradition also reads them as Vishnu's three footprints. ### Does Abhijit fall in Shravana Nakshatra? Partly. Abhijit spans 6°40' to 10°53'20" Capricorn, so its final 53 arcminutes overlap Shravana's opening degrees. The bulk of Abhijit sits in Uttara Ashadha's fourth pada. ### What careers suit Shravana Nakshatra? Teaching, journalism, broadcasting, translation, publishing, counselling, consultancy and market research, plus the direct ear professions of music, audiology and speech therapy.