How to Read the Daily Panchang

Panchang means “five limbs”. Together they describe the quality of any given day and underpin all muhurta (electional) astrology, festival dates and fasting days. Every element is calculated from the real positions of the Sun and Moon, so a Panchang is always specific to a place: the same date can have a different tithi or nakshatra at sunrise in Chennai and in London.

The five limbs

• Tithi — lunar day
• Vara — weekday
• Nakshatra — lunar mansion
• Yoga — Sun–Moon combination
• Karana — half of a tithi

Tithi

A tithi is the time the Moon takes to move 12 degrees ahead of the Sun. There are 30 in a lunar month: fifteen in the bright half (Shukla Paksha) from new moon to Purnima, and fifteen in the dark half (Krishna Paksha) back to Amavasya. Because the Moon’s speed varies, a tithi lasts anywhere from about 19 to 26 hours, so it rarely lines up with a calendar day. The tithi prevailing at sunrise is the one assigned to the day; occasionally a tithi begins and ends between two sunrises and is skipped (kshaya), or spans two sunrises and repeats (adhika). Most festivals — Ekadashi, Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali — are fixed by tithi.

Vara

Vara is the weekday, each ruled by a planet: Sunday (Sun), Monday (Moon), Tuesday (Mars), Wednesday (Mercury), Thursday (Jupiter), Friday (Venus), Saturday (Saturn). In the Vedic day the weekday begins at sunrise, not at midnight, so 3 a.m. on a Tuesday still belongs to Monday’s vara.

Nakshatra

The nakshatra of the day is the one the Moon is passing through, out of 27, each spanning 13 degrees 20 minutes. The Moon spends about a day in each. Some nakshatras are classed as fixed (good for foundations and house-warming), movable (travel, vehicles), sharp (surgery, ending things) or soft (arts, friendship), and this classification drives many muhurta choices.

Yoga and Karana

The yoga of the Panchang is found by adding the longitudes of the Sun and Moon and dividing the circle into 27 parts. Each yoga has a name, from Vishkambha to Vaidhriti; a few, such as Vyatipata and Vaidhriti, are avoided for new beginnings. A karana is half a tithi, so there are 60 in a month. Seven movable karanas repeat eight times and four fixed karanas fall around the new moon. Vishti, also called Bhadra, is the karana most avoided for auspicious work.

The rest of the page

Add sunrise, sunset and Rahu Kaal and you can choose good windows for important work and avoid inauspicious ones. Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal are each one-eighth of the daylight, at a different part of the day for each weekday. Abhijit Muhurta, around local midday, is considered favourable for most tasks. Choghadiya divides day and night into eight parts each and is popular in western India for quick decisions.

Using it day to day

For everyday use, glance at the tithi for fasts and festivals, the nakshatra for its general quality, and Rahu Kaal for times to avoid starting something new. For an important event such as a wedding, griha pravesh or business launch, all five limbs are checked together with your own birth star through Tarabalam and Chandrabalam. Our Panchang is computed for your exact city and date, with sunrise from the true position of the Sun at that location.