THE BLOG · WITH CALCULATOR

the panchang is five numbers, not a mood

every good-timing date u have ever been quoted was built out of exactly five measurements of one day. here is what each one is, how it is worked out, and why two panchangs can disagree about the same tuesday.

AUGUST 6, 2026 · 12 MIN READ

someone tells u a date is auspicious. u nod. u have no idea what got measured, and nobody offers to tell u.

so here is what got measured.

a panchang is five numbers worked out for one day in one place. every muhurat, every festival date, every good window in indian practice is built from those five and nothing else.

the word says so. pancha is five and anga is limb. five limbs. this post takes each one apart, shows the sum behind it, and gives u a calculator for any date u like.

the short version

panchang means five limbs. those five are tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana.
four of the five come from just two numbers: where the sun is and where the moon is.
tithi is how far ahead of the sun the moon has got, counted in 12 degree steps. thirty of them per moon month.
vara is the weekday. the vedic day runs sunrise to sunrise, not midnight to midnight.
nakshatra is which of the 27 star slices the moon is in. yoga is the sun and moon added. karana is half a tithi.
two panchangs disagree for three real reasons: a different ayanamsa, a different town for sunrise, or a different rule about which tithi owns a day. none of them is a mistake.

THE QUICK CHECK

look up any day's panchang

pick a date and we work out all five limbs for it: the tithi and paksha, the vara, the moon's nakshatra, the yoga and the karana.

Calculated in ur browser for sunrise-ish local time in India, using the Lahiri ayanamsa. Tithi, yoga and karana all move continuously, so a printed panchang gives u the one running at sunrise plus the clock time it ends. Near a boundary, a printed regional panchang computed for ur exact town is the better source.

quick facts

Meaning of the word: Pancha (five) plus anga (limb). Five limbs of the day.
The five: Tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga, karana
Inputs needed: Sun longitude, moon longitude, the date, and a location for sunrise
Tithi: 12 degrees of moon-minus-sun separation. 30 per lunar month.
Vara: The weekday, running sunrise to sunrise
Nakshatra: The moon's position among 27 divisions of 13 degrees 20 minutes
Yoga: Sun longitude plus moon longitude, cut into 27 divisions
Karana: Half a tithi, 6 degrees. Sixty in a lunar month, eleven distinct names.

what a panchang actually is

A panchang is a table of five worked-out numbers for each day: tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana. It is the working document of the hindu calendar, and every auspicious timing in indian practice is built out of those five.

people treat the panchang like a book of secrets. it is much closer to a tide table. someone works out where the sun and moon are, applies four definitions and a weekday, and prints it.

once u see the definitions, what stands out is how little goes in. four of the five limbs come from just two numbers: where the sun is, and where the moon is.

tithi is the two subtracted. yoga is the two added. nakshatra is the moon on its own. karana is half a tithi. only vara, the weekday, comes from anywhere else.

hold on to that the next time someone quotes u a complicated-sounding window. underneath it there are two angles and a sunrise.

limb one: tithi, the lunar day

A tithi is how long the moon takes to gain 12 degrees on the sun. Thirty tithis make one moon month, split into two halves: shukla paksha while the moon fills up, and krishna paksha while it empties. A tithi runs anywhere from about 19 to 26 hours.

this limb does the most work, and it is the one behind most festival dates.

the sum is simple. take where the moon is, subtract where the sun is, and u get a number between 0 and 360. divide that by 12. the whole number is ur tithi, somewhere from 0 to 29.

indices 0 to 14 are shukla paksha, the bright fortnight, when the moon is waxing.
indices 15 to 29 are krishna paksha, the dark fortnight, when it is waning.
the 15th of shukla paksha is Purnima, the full moon. the 15th of krishna is Amavasya, the new moon.

here is the bit everyone misses. tithis are not all the same length. the moon travels an oval, not a circle, so its speed keeps changing. one tithi runs about 19 hours, the next maybe 26.

which means a tithi can start mid-afternoon, or duck past a sunrise completely, or stretch over two of them. that has real consequences for the calendar:

a kshaya tithi is one that begins and ends between two sunrises, so no day carries it. it is skipped.
an adhika tithi covers two sunrises, so it is counted twice.

this is exactly why Hindu festival dates move around the Gregorian calendar, which we covered in why Hindu festival dates change every year.

one more handy thing. tithi does not care which ayanamsa u use. it is one position minus another, so if u shift both by the same amount, the gap between them does not move. every panchang in the world agrees on today's tithi. that is not true of nakshatra or yoga.

limb two: vara, the weekday that starts at dawn

Vara is the weekday, named after the seven grahas u can see: Ravivara for the Sun, Somavara for the Moon, and so on. The big difference from the western weekday is that the vedic day runs sunrise to sunrise, so a birth at 3am belongs to the day before.

Vara	English	Ruling graha
Ravivara	Sunday	Sun
Somavara	Monday	Moon
Mangalavara	Tuesday	Mars
Budhavara	Wednesday	Mercury
Guruvara	Thursday	Jupiter
Shukravara	Friday	Venus
Shanivara	Saturday	Saturn

the match with the english names is not a fluke. Sunday, Monday and Saturday give themselves away. the other four came through norse gods standing in for roman ones: Tuesday from Tiw for Mars, Wednesday from Woden for Mercury, Thursday from Thor for Jupiter, Friday from Frigg for Venus.

two traditions, thousands of miles apart, named the week after the same seven moving lights. because those seven are the ones u can actually see.

the sunrise rule matters more than it sounds. someone born at 4am on a wednesday was, in panchang terms, born on tuesday. that changes which planet rules their day, which fasting day applies, and which vara goes on their record. it catches people out all the time when an indian record meets a hospital one.

limb three: nakshatra, where the moon slept

A day's nakshatra is whichever of the 27 star slices the moon is crossing. Each slice is 13 degrees 20 minutes wide, so the moon crosses about one a day. This is the limb used most when picking a moment to start something.

the moon takes about 27.3 days to go round the sky, so ancient indian sky-watchers marked out the 27 places it sleeps. ur birth nakshatra is one of them. a day's nakshatra is wherever the moon is that day.

the sum: take the moon's position, divide by 13 degrees 20 minutes, and the whole number is ur nakshatra. each one splits again into four quarters called padas.

unlike tithi, nakshatra does care which ayanamsa u use, because it is measured from a fixed starting point among the stars. so a Lahiri panchang and a Raman one can disagree when the moon is right on an edge. small difference, but it lands exactly where it matters.

nakshatra is the limb that does most of the work in muhurat, choosing a time to begin something. some nakshatras are traditionally favoured for particular activities: Pushya for almost anything, Rohini for planting and building, Ashwini for medicine and travel. the full list, with what each one is traditionally good for, is in 27 nakshatras, ranked by how messy they are.

limb four: yoga, the sun and moon added together

The yoga is worked out by adding the sun's position to the moon's, then cutting the total into 27 slices. There are 27 named yogas, from Vishkambha to Vaidhriti. It is the limb people know least, and it has nothing to do with the exercise.

this one confuses everybody, because the word is doing three jobs at once. panchang yoga is not the yoga of postures. it is also not the yoga of chart combinations like gajakesari yoga. same sanskrit word, three different meanings.

the sum: add the sun's position to the moon's, wrap it back into 0 to 360, then divide by 13 degrees 20 minutes. u get a number from 0 to 26, and each one has a name. the sequence runs Vishkambha, Priti, Ayushman, Saubhagya, Shobhana, Atiganda, Sukarma, Dhriti, Shula, Ganda, Vriddhi, Dhruva, Vyaghata, Harshana, Vajra, Siddhi, Vyatipata, Variyana, Parigha, Shiva, Siddha, Sadhya, Shubha, Shukla, Brahma, Indra, Vaidhriti.

because it adds the two positions instead of subtracting them, yoga moves faster than tithi. it usually changes about once a day.

only a handful are treated as unlucky: Vyatipata, Vaidhriti, Ganda, Atiganda, Shula and Vyaghata. those are the ones avoided when picking a muhurat.

the other twenty-one are neutral or good. worth knowing before someone tells u the yoga on ur wedding date is a problem. most of them are not.

limb five: karana, half a tithi

A karana is half a tithi, so 6 degrees of gap between the moon and sun instead of 12. There are 60 in a moon month, but only eleven names: seven that move, repeating eight times each, and four fixed ones that turn up once each around the new moon.

this is the limb that matters least, and the one most readers skip. it is here because it is one of the five, and because muhurat rules do use it.

divide the moon-minus-sun gap by 6 instead of 12 and u get 60 karanas per month. the naming is where it gets strange:

the seven movable karanas, Bava, Balava, Kaulava, Taitila, Gara, Vanija and Vishti, repeat eight times through the cycle, filling 56 of the 60 slots.
the four fixed karanas, Kimstughna, Shakuni, Chatushpada and Naga, appear exactly once each, clustered around the new moon.

the one u will hear about is Vishti, also called Bhadra. tradition says do not start anything important during it.

but it comes round eight times a month, so every third or fourth day. do the maths on that. something that turns up eight times a month is a scheduling preference, not a warning.

how muhurat gets built from the five

A muhurat is a good window, built by checking the five limbs against whatever u are planning. The astrologer looks for a good nakshatra and tithi, avoids the unlucky yogas and Vishti karana, and steers clear of the daily bad windows like Rahu Kaal.

this is where the five limbs stop being trivia and start deciding when a wedding happens.

the usual process, boiled down but not bent:

check the nakshatra. different activities have traditionally favoured nakshatras. this does most of the filtering.
check the tithi. some tithis are avoided for particular activities. the 4th, 9th and 14th of each fortnight are broadly avoided for auspicious beginnings.
check the vara. each weekday has activities it favours, tied to its ruling graha.
avoid the inauspicious yogas, principally Vyatipata and Vaidhriti.
avoid Vishti karana.
avoid the daily inauspicious windows, above all Rahu Kaal, a roughly ninety minute period whose timing depends on the weekday and on local sunrise and sunset.

now stack those six filters on top of each other. six rules, a limited number of hours in a year, and u are left with very few windows.

that is exactly why auspicious wedding dates bunch up, and why halls across india are booked solid on a handful of days.

there is one escape hatch: Abhijit muhurat, roughly the 48 minutes either side of local noon. tradition treats it as good for almost anything, which makes it useful when nothing else in the day is clean.

why two panchangs disagree about the same day

Three real reasons. They may use a different ayanamsa, which moves nakshatra and yoga near an edge. They may work out sunrise for a different city, which changes the vara and which tithi owns the day. Or they may follow a different regional rule about which tithi a date carries.

this happens constantly, and almost nobody has made a mistake.

different ayanamsa

Lahiri is the indian government standard, but Raman, Krishnamurti and others are genuinely in use, and they sit a degree or more apart. that never touches the tithi, because a tithi is a gap. but it can move the nakshatra or yoga when the moon is sitting on an edge.

different location

a panchang is worked out for one particular place, because sunrise is what starts the day. and sunrise in Kolkata is nearly two hours before sunrise in Mumbai.

so a tithi that ends inside those two hours belongs to different days in the two cities. this is the commonest reason two panchangs disagree, and the least understood.

different regional convention

there is more than one rule for which tithi a date carries. most traditions use whichever tithi is running at sunrise. some pick a different moment, or keep special rules for particular festivals.

on top of that, the amanta calendar of west and south India ends its month at the new moon, while the purnimanta calendar of the north ends it at the full moon. that shifts month names by a fortnight at a time.

so, practically: for anything that matters, use a panchang worked out for ur town, following ur family's tradition. a national one is fine to read and wrong to plan with.

what gets repeated, and what is actually true

The panchang is a mystical document.

It is a worked-out table. Four of its five limbs come from two numbers, where the sun is and where the moon is. The fifth is just the weekday. You can check every entry against an ephemeris yourself.

A panchang is the same everywhere in India.

It cannot be. The day starts at sunrise, and sunrise in Kolkata is nearly two hours before Mumbai. Any tithi ending in that gap lands on a different date in the two cities.

An inauspicious yoga on my date means I should move it.

Only six of the 27 yogas are avoided. The rest are neutral or good. And a yoga changes about once a day, so the scary ones come round far more often than the reputation suggests.

Vishti karana is a serious warning.

It comes round eight times a month, so every third or fourth day. Something that common is a scheduling preference, not a danger.

Rahu Kaal is a fixed time of day.

It depends on the weekday and on local sunrise and sunset, so it shifts through the year and changes from city to city. A fixed printed time is a rough guess for one place.

mistakes worth not making

using a panchang made for a different city. sunrise starts the day, so the place is not a small detail.
assuming ur weekday is ur vara. anything before local sunrise belongs to the day before. this catches out everyone born early in the morning.
mixing up panchang yoga with chart yogas. same word, completely different thing. gajakesari yoga has nothing to do with the daily yoga.
thinking a tithi is a 24 hour day. they run 19 to 26 hours, and that is exactly why the calendar moves the way it does.
picking a muhurat off a national app for a family event. local sunrise and ur family's own tradition both decide, and the family usually wins.

the receipt

the definitions above are the standard ones. tithi is a 12 degree gap, karana is 6 degrees, yoga is the two positions added and cut into 27, and nakshatra is the moon's position cut into 27 slices of 13 degrees 20 minutes. the calculator does that arithmetic rather than looking answers up in a table.

tithi and karana ignore the ayanamsa by design, since both bodies shift by the same amount. nakshatra and yoga do not, and we use Lahiri throughout.

the calculator runs for roughly sunrise in India and uses a moon position accurate to a few tenths of a degree. that is plenty to name the right limb on most days, and not enough to be trusted within an hour of an edge. for planning anything real, use a printed regional panchang made for ur own town.

and the weekday thing is history, not a coincidence we invented. english and sanskrit both named the week after the same seven visible grahas, with the four midweek english names arriving through norse gods standing in for the roman ones.

frequently asked questions

what is a panchang?

a table of five worked-out numbers for one day: tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana. the word means five limbs. every auspicious timing in indian practice is built from those five.

what are the five limbs of the panchang?

tithi, the moon day. vara, the weekday. nakshatra, the star slice the moon is in. yoga, the sun and moon positions added together. karana, half a tithi.

what is a tithi?

the time the moon takes to gain 12 degrees on the sun. there are thirty in a moon month: fifteen while it fills up, in shukla paksha, and fifteen while it empties, in krishna paksha. each runs about 19 to 26 hours.

why do tithis vary in length?

because the moon travels an oval, not a circle, so its speed keeps changing. that is why some tithis get skipped and others get counted twice.

what is the difference between tithi and a normal day?

a normal day is a fixed 24 hours. a tithi is measured by the angle between the moon and the sun, and runs about 19 to 26 hours. so the two slide against each other all the time.

what is vara?

the weekday, named after the seven grahas u can see. the vedic day runs sunrise to sunrise, so anything before local sunrise belongs to the day before.

what is yoga in the panchang?

the sun's position plus the moon's, cut into 27 named slices. it has nothing to do with the exercise, and nothing to do with chart yogas like gajakesari.

what is karana?

half a tithi, so a 6 degree gap. sixty per moon month, but only eleven names: seven that move and repeat eight times each, and four fixed ones near the new moon.

what is Vishti or Bhadra karana?

one of the seven moving karanas, traditionally avoided for starting anything important. it comes round eight times a month, which is far more often than its reputation suggests.

what is Rahu Kaal?

a stretch of about ninety minutes each day that tradition says not to start things in. when it falls depends on the weekday and on ur local sunrise and sunset, so it is not a fixed time on the clock.

what is Abhijit muhurat?

roughly the 48 minutes either side of local noon, treated as good for almost anything. it is the usual fallback when nothing else in the day is clean.

why do two panchangs show different dates?

three real reasons: a different ayanamsa, a different city used for sunrise, or a different regional rule about which tithi a date carries. none of them is a mistake.

what is the difference between amanta and purnimanta?

two ways of ending a moon month. amanta, used in west and south India, ends at the new moon. purnimanta, used in the north, ends at the full moon. so the same day can sit in differently named months.

do I need a panchang for my birth chart?

no. ur chart is built straight from where the planets were. the panchang tells u the tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana of ur birth, which is background rather than something the chart needs.

can I calculate a panchang myself?

yes. where the sun is, where the moon is, and a sunrise time will give u all five limbs. the calculator above does exactly that in ur browser, and tells u which ayanamsa it used.

the five things worth remembering

five limbs: tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga, karana. four of them come from just two numbers, where the sun is and where the moon is.
tithi is a 12 degree gap, runs 19 to 26 hours, and ignores the ayanamsa, so every panchang agrees on it.
the vedic day starts at sunrise, so an early morning birth belongs to the day before.
muhurat is six filters stacked on the five limbs. that is why good dates are rare and bunch together.
two panchangs disagree over the ayanamsa, the city, or regional custom. for planning, use one made for ur own town.