Day Panchang

The five limbs — tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana — with sunrise, moonrise and the day's auspicious and inauspicious windows.

DateLocation

Reference Location

Time zone

New Delhi, India· time zone follows this location

What a panchang is

A panchang is the Hindu almanac for a single day, and the name means five limbs — the five things it measures. It is the layer underneath every other timing tool here: choghadiya, hora and the muhurat lists are all built on the sunrise it establishes.

It is read for the day rather than for a person. Everyone in the same city has the same panchang.

Reading the table above

Each of the five limbs shows the moment it gives way to the next, not a duration. A tithi can have twenty-five hours left at sunrise or a few minutes, and across half a year of sampling it ends before local noon on about half of days — so the one named at the top is the one running at sunrise, which is the classical convention, not the one running when you look.

Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika are each an eighth of the daylight, so their length moves with the season — in Delhi between about 77 and 105 minutes across a year. They are the windows people actually avoid.

Abhijit is shown even on a Wednesday, marked as not observed, because a dash cannot tell you the difference between not applicable and could not compute.

What each name means

TithiThe lunar day — the Moon gaining 12 degrees on the Sun. Thirty to a lunar month, and they vary in length.

VaraThe weekday, running sunrise to sunrise rather than midnight to midnight.

NakshatraWhich of the 27 lunar mansions the Moon is in.

YogaA value from the Sun and Moon added together. Twenty-seven of them, and unrelated to yoga as exercise.

KaranaHalf a tithi. Eleven names covering sixty positions in a lunar month.

Rahu KaalAn eighth of the daylight, chosen by weekday, traditionally avoided for anything new.

What people get wrong

“The panchang is the same everywhere in India.”

It is not, and the reason is sunrise. Every limb here is read at local sunrise, which differs by more than an hour between the east and west of the country — so a panchang printed for Kolkata can name a different tithi than one for Mumbai on the same date.

“The day starts at midnight.”

Not here. A Hindu day runs sunrise to sunrise, which is why a reading can end after midnight and still belong to the previous date, and why the weekday changes at dawn rather than at twelve.

“A panchang shows everything an almanac does.”

This one does not, by choice. Panchaka Rahita, Varjyam, Dur Muhurtam, the Udaya Lagna table and the festival list are all absent, because their definitions diverge between regional schools and a subtly wrong version is worse than none — a reader cannot tell which they are looking at.

Questions people ask

Why does my panchang differ from the one at the temple?

Usually location, sometimes school. Check the city first — the whole page is derived from local sunrise. Beyond that, regional traditions genuinely differ on some of the finer values.

What is the most useful thing on this page?

For most people, Rahu Kaal and the nakshatra. The first is the window to keep clear; the second is what muhurat rules are mostly built from.

Do I need this if I am already using choghadiya?

They answer different questions. Choghadiya grades the parts of the day; the panchang tells you what day it is in the first place, and carries Rahu Kaal, which choghadiya does not.

Before you rely on this

Set the time zone to match the place. A panchang is a local-day artifact and the day runs sunrise to sunrise, so a wrong offset makes every field individually plausible and collectively wrong.
Look elsewhere for the parts not shown. Panchaka Rahita, Varjyam, Dur Muhurtam, the Udaya Lagna table and festivals are all deliberately absent — the definitions diverge by regional school and shipping them subtly wrong is worse than omitting them.
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