Panchang

What is the Panchang?

The Panchang is a five-limb almanac of the day. For thousands of years, communities across the subcontinent have used it to align their work, travel, prayer, and celebration with the rhythms of the sun, moon, and seasons. It is not a forecast and it is not a prescription: it is a daily reference, a way of noticing where today sits in the larger cycle. The word itself means "five limbs," and each limb measures one aspect of the day's character.

The five limbs explained

Tithi is the lunar day: the angular distance between the sun and the moon, measured in 12-degree steps. Each tithi has its own personality: some favour new beginnings, some are better for completion, some are considered cautious. The tithi changes through the day, often at an uneven hour, because the moon moves at a varying speed.

Nakshatra is the lunar mansion: the constellation the moon is sitting in right now, chosen from a fixed set of 27 around the ecliptic. Nakshatra is the most personal limb; it shapes the emotional weather of the day and is the basis for matching, naming, and most muhurta work.

Yoga is a combined sun-moon measurement: 27 named windows that describe the coordinated quality of the day. Some are auspicious, some are to be observed with care.

Karana is half a tithi. Eleven karanas rotate through the lunar month and tag each half-day with a flavour: supportive, neutral, or to be paused.

Vara is simply the weekday, but with a ruling planet attached: Sun for Sunday, Moon for Monday, Mars for Tuesday, and so on. The Vara colours the day's energy and is the basis for several of the inauspicious windows below.

How to read the day windows

The auspicious windows (Brahma Muhurta, Abhijit, Vijaya, Amrit Kalam, and the rest) are short stretches of the day considered favourable for starting work, signing, travelling, or meditating. The inauspicious windows are not forbidden; they are flagged for caution. Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda, and Gulika are the three best-known, each repeating on a fixed weekday slot. Abhijit Muhurta sits around solar noon and is broadly considered the safest window of the day for any unplanned action.

Notes on the timings

All positions are computed with the Lahiri 1940 sidereal ayanamsha, using the Swiss Ephemeris for planetary longitudes. The day is anchored to local sunrise, not midnight, so a muhurta listed at 02:18 belongs to "today's" panchang day even though the wall clock has rolled past midnight. Timestamps are shown in the timezone of the city you have selected, in the format you choose from the toggle at the top.

What is coming next

This page is the foundation. In the coming weeks we will surface the Mantri Mandala (the year's celestial cabinet), Nivas and Shool (directional caution for travel), the Chandrabalam and Tarabalam lists by rashi and nakshatra, and the Panchaka Rahita Muhurta: a sunrise-to-sunrise timeline of every good and guarded segment of the day. If you would like to be notified when each lands, save a chart to your account.