Panchang explained: the five limbs of a Hindu day
A panchang is five separate measurements of the sky, not one list. Here is what tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana each count, why the day begins at sunrise, and why the same date reads differently in two cities.
The small print on a wall calendar, the column of names and times, is a panchang. Most people read one line of it — the tithi, perhaps, or Rahu Kaal — and ignore the rest, because nobody explains what the rest is measuring.
The word is plain once you split it. Pancha is five and anga is limb: a panchang is five limbs, five different things measured about the same moment.
The five limbs
Tithi — the lunar day. The angle between the Moon and the Sun, in steps of twelve degrees. Each step is one tithi, so a lunar month has thirty: fifteen as the Moon waxes (shukla paksha) and fifteen as it wanes (krishna paksha). Because the Moon's speed changes, a tithi is not a fixed length — it runs anywhere from about nineteen to twenty-six hours, and it does not begin at midnight.
Vara — the weekday. Seven of them, each named for a graha. The one detail worth knowing is that a vara runs from sunrise to the next sunrise, not midnight to midnight.
Nakshatra — where the Moon is among the stars. The sky's belt is divided into twenty-seven equal parts of thirteen degrees and twenty minutes, and the nakshatra is the part the Moon is in. The Moon covers about one a day. We have a whole piece on finding yours.
Yoga — the Sun and Moon added together. Add their two positions and divide the total into the same twenty-seven parts: the yoga is how far that sum has travelled. It has nothing to do with the exercise; it is a name for a stretch of that combined movement.
Karana — half a tithi. Six degrees of the Moon's lead over the Sun, so sixty to a lunar month. There are eleven names: seven that repeat in a cycle and four that appear once a month at fixed places. One of the seven, Vishti (also called Bhadra), is the one traditionally avoided for beginning anything new.
Why the day starts at sunrise
A Hindu day does not begin at midnight. It begins at sunrise, and the tithi, nakshatra and the rest that matter for that date are the ones running at that moment.
That has a consequence people rarely notice: a panchang needs a place. Sunrise is not one moment across a country. Between Ahmedabad and Kolkata it is more than an hour apart by the clock, and every time that hangs off sunrise — Rahu Kaal, the muhurtas, the day's boundaries — moves with it.
This is why a panchang copied from somebody in another city is quietly wrong for you. It is not that either is mistaken; they are answering for different sunrises. Ours is worked out for the city you choose: Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and the rest each have their own.
The times that sit beside the five
Most printed panchangs add timings to the five limbs. The two people look up most are Rahu Kaal, an eighth of the daylight, and Abhijit Muhurat, the midday window. Both are fractions of the day from sunrise to sunset, which is the other reason they differ by city and by season.
Reading today's
A sensible order, if you are looking at it for the first time:
- Find the tithi and nakshatra at sunrise. They name the day.
- Note the Rahu Kaal window, which is the one most households actually plan around.
- If you are choosing a time for something, look at the muhurtas rather than only the five limbs.
The panchang describes what the sky is doing. What to do with it is a matter of tradition and of your own judgement — it is an almanac, not an instruction.
Today's, for your city, is on our panchang page, with every limb and every timing worked out from the position of the Sun and Moon rather than looked up in a table.