What is a panchang? The five limbs of the Hindu almanac
Tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana: the five limbs of the Hindu almanac, and how each one is read from the sky.
A panchang is the traditional Hindu almanac: a day-by-day account of time, made for one place, that gives every day five measures taken from the sky. The name comes from the Sanskrit panchanga, five limbs, and the five are the tithi (the lunar day), the vara (the weekday), the nakshatra (one of 27 star divisions along the Moon's path), the yoga and the karana. Households keep one for festival and fasting days, and practitioners read it when choosing a time for an undertaking.
Four of the limbs come from the positions of the Sun and the Moon, and the fifth from the sunrise. This note covers what a panchang holds, how each limb is worked out, why panchangs disagree, and what tradition and a bounded reading take from them.
What a panchang holds
In much of the south the word is written panchangam, and in Bengal, Assam, Odisha and Nepal the almanac is the panjika. A daily entry names each limb and gives the moment it ends, since few of them change exactly at sunrise. Around them sit the Moon's sign and the figures that depend on the place: sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset, and spans counted from the sunrise, such as Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika, three daytime periods tradition sets aside for beginnings. The lunar month and fortnight, the festivals and the fasting days complete the page.
India's national almanac, the Rashtriya Panchang, published by the India Meteorological Department, sets out the same five limbs with their ending moments. Traditional panchangs often give those moments in ghatis, units of twenty-four minutes counted from sunrise; the note on the ghati shows how to convert them.
How the five limbs are worked out
Four of the limbs count equal steps around the zodiac, the 360-degree circle the Sun and the Moon appear to travel, measured in the sidereal zodiac, which is fixed to the stars:
- Tithi: one is complete each time the Moon gains another 12 degrees on the Sun, so thirty fill a lunar month of about 29.5 days. Fifteen make the bright half, the shukla paksha, ending at the full moon, purnima, and fifteen the dark half, the krishna paksha, ending at the new moon, amavasya. A tithi averages a little under a day, and the Moon's uneven speed makes some several hours shorter or longer.
- Nakshatra: the division the Moon is passing through, one of 27 equal arcs of 13°20′, thirteen and a third degrees, from Ashwini to Revati. The Moon takes about a day to cross one.
- Yoga: the positions of the Sun and the Moon added together, with the sum cut into the same 27 steps of 13°20′, named from Vishkambha to Vaidhriti. The word means joining; this yoga is a count, not the practice of posture and breath.
- Karana: half a tithi, one for each 6 degrees the Moon gains, so sixty fill a lunar month under eleven names: seven that repeat in turn eight times, and four fixed ones around the new moon.
The fifth limb, the vara, is the weekday, named for one of the seven grahas, the moving bodies of traditional astronomy, and counted from one sunrise to the next; The Vedic day: why it starts at sunrise sets out that reckoning.
A worked example, with round illustrative positions rather than any real date: at sunrise the Sun stands at 20 degrees and the Moon at 125, so the Moon leads by 105 degrees and the two add up to 145. In each count, the limb in force is the one after the last complete step.
| Limb | Degrees counted | One step | Steps complete | In force |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tithi | 105, the Moon's lead | 12 | 8 | Navami, the ninth of the bright half |
| Karana | 105, the Moon's lead | 6 | 17 | Kaulava, the eighteenth |
| Nakshatra | 125, the Moon | 13°20′ | 9 | Magha, the tenth |
| Yoga | 145, the sum | 13°20′ | 10 | Vriddhi, the eleventh |
The tithi falls in the bright half because the lead is under 180 degrees: the Moon is just past first quarter, more than half lit and growing.
Why two panchangs can disagree
The moment a tithi, nakshatra, yoga or karana ends is set by the Sun and the Moon alone, so it is one instant for the whole earth, written in each place's clock time. What changes from place to place is the sunrise, and with it the limbs a day carries. Take a tithi that ends a little after dawn: where the sun rose before that moment, the day carries that tithi; in a city farther west, where the sun rose after it, the day takes the next one. That is why festivals and fasting days are worked out for a place, and why one can fall a day apart in two cities, even in a single time zone.
Now and then a short tithi begins after one sunrise and ends before the next, so no day carries it: a kshaya, or lost, tithi. A long one, an adhika or extra tithi, can be in force at two sunrises, and then two days in a row carry it.
Conventions differ as well:
- The month. In the amanta reckoning, followed across much of western and peninsular India, the lunar month ends at the new moon; in the purnimanta reckoning, followed in Nepal and most of India north of the Vindhya range, it ends at the full moon. A dark half therefore belongs to a different month in each: Maha Shivaratri, the fourteenth tithi of a dark half, falls in Magha in one and in Phalguna in the other, one day named two ways.
- The ayanamsa. The nakshatra and the yoga depend on the ayanamsa, the offset a panchang takes between the sidereal and tropical zodiacs; the tithi and the karana, which measure only the gap between the Moon and the Sun, do not.
- The method. Some panchangs still calculate from the siddhantas, the classical astronomical treatises, others from modern astronomy, and their ending moments can differ by several minutes.
What tradition does with the panchang
Most Hindu festivals are set by a tithi in a named lunar month, which is why they move from year to year against the solar calendar, while a few, such as Vaisakhi and Pongal, follow the Sun and keep close to one date. Fasting days follow the tithi too, as Ekadashi, the eleventh tithi of each half, does. A festival usually takes the day on which its tithi is in force at sunrise, though some observances look to the tithi at sunset or at moonrise instead.
When a time is chosen, the limbs are read together, and practitioners hold panchanga shuddhi, the purity of the five limbs, to be fundamental. Some limbs are set aside, among them Vishti, the seventh of the repeating karanas, which panchangs often list as Bhadra and which tradition does not choose for beginnings. For a particular person the chart comes in as well: tarabala counts from the birth nakshatra to the day's nakshatra, and chandrabala counts the day's Moon sign from the birth Moon sign. What is a muhurat? shows how those layers are weighed.
Practice varies by region, by lineage and by family. Throughout, the almanac describes the day rather than forecasting it: it says which limbs are in force, not how anything begun under them will go.
How Sumuhurta relates to the panchang
Sumuhurta, the iPhone and Android app this site is about, is built on the panchang's day and reads a few of its layers. On the phone it calculates sunrise, sunset and the next sunrise for your place, and the vara in force at sunrise decides where its counts begin: the opening name of the choghadiya, the eight named parts of the daylight and of the night, the lord of the first hora, or planetary hour, and the parts of the daylight that Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika fill. On the personal side it works out tarabala and chandrabala from the day's nakshatra and Moon sign, measured in the sidereal zodiac with the Lahiri ayanamsa, and weighs them with the hora, the abhijit muhurta around local noon and the Brahma muhurta before dawn against the birth chart entered on your phone.
What comes out is not a panchang but one to three personal windows in each sunrise-to-sunrise cycle, day or night, running roughly twenty to a hundred and fifty minutes and never crossing sunrise or sunset. Each carries a plain-English quality, Clear run, Sharp or Steady, and a quiet attribution naming the hora and the choghadiya at its middle, in the form Mercury hora · Labh. Kaal, Rog and Udveg, named in the rule below, are the three choghadiya names tradition sets aside. The rule governing where a window may fall at all reads:
Every personal window Sumuhurta surfaces is calculated to avoid Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda, Gulika, and the Kaal, Rog and Udveg choghadiya periods.
That rule is narrow on purpose. The app does not perform a complete electional-muhurta assessment, the fuller traditional work of choosing a moment for one occasion, which weighs many more factors. It does not replace a full panchang: no screen shows one, and there are no tithi, nakshatra, festival, choghadiya, hora or Rahu Kaal tables. It shows no score or rating, never marks any part of the day as a bad time, and does not predict outcomes. For the day's limbs, festival dates or a time chosen for an occasion, a full panchang for your city or a qualified practitioner is the right place to go. How it reads the day covers the rest of the calculation.
Common questions
What are the five limbs of the panchang?
The tithi, the lunar day; the vara, the weekday from sunrise to sunrise; the nakshatra, the Moon's star division; the yoga, a count made from the Sun and the Moon together; and the karana, half a tithi.
Can the tithi change partway through the day?
Yes. A tithi ends whenever the Moon completes another 12 degrees on the Sun, at any hour. A panchang names the one in force at sunrise and the moment it ends, after which the next begins.
Why do two panchangs give different dates for one festival?
Usually because they are made for different places, whose sunrises differ, or follow different conventions for the month, the ayanamsa or the calculation. Where your household follows a particular panchang, follow it.
Does the app show a panchang?
No. It uses the vara and the nakshatra in its own reckoning and shows one to three personal windows instead, with no tithi, nakshatra or festival tables. A full panchang for your city gives the five limbs and their ending moments.