Pañcāṅga · पञ्चाङ्ग
Panchang for your city and date
Pick where you are and the day you want. You will get the five limbs with the time each one hands over to the next, the three periods people avoid, and both Choghadiya rows, all cut from the sunrise and sunset where you actually are rather than from a table somebody printed for somewhere else.
The place is not decoration. Your day starts at sunrise where you are, and Rahu Kaal is one eighth of the daylight you actually get, so both answers move when the place does.
Somavara · Monday · Shukla paksha
Dashami, Uttara Ashadha
Sunrise 6:08 AM, sunset 6:19 PM in New Delhi. This panchang day runs to the next sunrise at 6:09 AM, 22 Sep.
The five limbs
- Tithi
- Dashami until 8:01 PM, then Ekadashi from there on
- The lunar day: how far the Moon has pulled ahead of the Sun, in twelve-degree steps.
- Vara
- Somavara, counted from this morning's sunrise
- The weekday, which turns at sunrise rather than at midnight.
- Nakshatra
- Uttara Ashadha from there on
- The lunar mansion the Moon is crossing, one of twenty-seven.
- Yoga
- Shobhana until 4:06 PM, then Atiganda from there on
- Sun and Moon added together, in the same twenty-seven steps. The only limb whose value depends on the ayanamsa.
- Karana
- Taitila until 6:59 AM, Gara until 8:01 PM, then Vanija from there on
- Half a tithi. Four of the eleven names appear once a month; the other seven repeat.
Periods to avoid
Each is one eighth of today’s daylight in New Delhi, which today is 91 minutes long. Which eighth falls to which period depends only on the weekday.
Rahu Kaal
7:40 AM – 9:11 AM
The one most people know. Traditionally avoided for anything you are starting.
Yamaganda
10:42 AM – 12:14 PM
Avoided for travel and for beginnings, on the same eighth-of-the-day logic.
Gulika Kaal
1:45 PM – 3:16 PM
Read as the period whose effects repeat, so avoided for anything you would not want twice.
Choghadiya, sunrise to sunset
The same eight divisions, read for what they suit rather than only for what to avoid. Amrit, Shubh and Labh are the ones people pick; Kaal, Rog and Udveg are the ones they work around. The eighth repeats the first, which is not an error in the table.
Choghadiya, sunset to sunrise
Why a date on its own is not enough
A panchang day begins at sunrise and ends at the next one. That is the whole reason this calculator asks where you are before it tells you anything. Look up the same calendar date from Delhi and from Chicago and you can genuinely be on two different tithis, because Chicago’s sunrise arrives more than half a day later and the Moon has moved on. Neither answer is wrong. They are answers to different questions, and the question is always about a place.
Rahu Kaal makes the point harder to argue with. It is not ninety minutes. It is an eighth of the daylight, so it stretches in June and shrinks in December, and it stretches further the closer you get to the poles. On the December solstice an eighth is 85 minutes in Chennai, 77 in Delhi and 59 in London. Any table that hands you the same block all year is not computing this at all, and the further north you live the more it is out by.
- Day boundary
- Sunrise to the next sunrise at the place given, which is why this calculator asks for a place and not only a date
- Zodiac
- Nirayana (sidereal), Lahiri ayanamsa, the same as every other Vedic page here
- Sunrise
- Geometric sunrise and sunset for the centre of the Sun's disc, from astronomy-engine, at sea level. Almanacs that use the upper limb and a refraction allowance will differ by a minute or two
- Not computed
- Regional festival lists, muhurta selection for a specific act, and the sunset-reckoned Vikram Samvat month names
50 cities are offered, weighted towards India and towards the places people read a panchang from over breakfast. If yours is missing, the nearest one on the same side of the same time zone will be within a couple of minutes on everything here.
What the five limbs are counting
Four of the five are the Moon, measured four different ways, which is the tell that this is a lunar almanac wearing a solar calendar’s clothes. Only the vara, the weekday, has nothing to do with the Moon, and even that turns at sunrise rather than at midnight.
| Limb | Count | What is being measured |
|---|---|---|
| Tithi | 30 | How far the Moon has pulled ahead of the Sun, in steps of twelve degrees. A tithi is not a fixed length: it runs from about 20 hours to about 26, because the Moon's speed varies, which is why some tithis skip a sunrise and some catch two. |
| Vara | 7 | The weekday, running sunrise to sunrise. A birth at four in the morning falls on the previous vara, and that is not a rounding convention, it is how the day is defined. |
| Nakshatra | 27 | Which of the twenty-seven lunar mansions the Moon is crossing. The same nakshatras used for your birth chart and for kundli matching, on the same sidereal zodiac. |
| Yoga | 27 | Sun and Moon longitudes added, then cut into twenty-seven. Adding rather than subtracting means the ayanamsa does not cancel, so this is the one limb that changes if you change the ayanamsa. |
| Karana | 11 | Half a tithi, sixty per lunar month. Seven of the names repeat eight times each; the other four appear once a month, around the new moon. |
What this page does not do is pick a muhurta for you. Choosing an hour for a specific act means weighing the limbs against each other and against the chart of the person acting, and different traditions weigh them differently. The almanac is the raw material for that decision, not the decision.