How to read a Panchang: the five elements, explained

Panchang is Sanskrit for five limbs: pancha (five) and anga (limb). Those five are Tithi, Nakshatra, Yoga, Karana and Vara. Everything else on a panchang page — the muhurtas, the festivals, the sankalpa — is derived from them. Learn the five and the rest of the page stops looking like a wall of numbers.

1. Tithi — the lunar day

A tithi is the time the moon takes to gain 12° on the sun. Thirty of them make a lunar month, split into two fortnights: Shukla Paksha as the moon waxes toward full, and Krishna Paksha as it wanes toward new.

Because the moon's speed varies, a tithi is not a fixed length — it runs anywhere from about 19 to about 26 hours. That is why the tithi you woke up in may not be the tithi you go to bed in, and why festivals land on different Gregorian dates each year.

2. Nakshatra — the lunar mansion

The moon's path is divided into 27 nakshatras of 13°20′ each. The nakshatra tells you which one the moon is currently crossing. It carries a lot of weight in practice: naming ceremonies, marriage matching and several of the daily yogas are all keyed to it.

3. Yoga — the sun and moon added together

Yoga is the sum of the solar and lunar longitudes, divided into 27 parts. Note the difference from nakshatra: nakshatra uses the moon's position alone, yoga uses both added together. It is the element people most often skip, and the one that most often explains why a day is described as favourable or not.

Don't confuse it with the daily yogas

Confusingly, the word also names a separate set of combinations — Sarvartha Siddhi Yoga, Amrita Siddhi Yoga and Ravi Yoga — which arise from the pairing of a weekday with a nakshatra. Those are windows within a day, not one of the five limbs.

4. Karana — half a tithi

Each tithi is split in two, and each half is a karana. There are eleven of them, and one — Vishti, better known as Bhadra — is the one to watch. Bhadra is traditionally avoided for beginning auspicious work, and because it can run for many hours it frequently swallows otherwise favourable windows.

5. Vara — the weekday

The simplest of the five, and the only one anchored to the sun rather than the moon: the weekday, running sunrise to sunrise rather than midnight to midnight. That last detail matters — at 2 AM on Thursday morning, the panchang still considers it Wednesday.

Reading them together

Once the five are in front of you, the page reads in a sequence:

• Vara tells you which day's rules apply, including where Rahu Kalam falls
• Tithi and Nakshatra tell you what the day is, and when each turns over
• Karana warns you if Bhadra is running
• Yoga colours the whole day favourable or otherwise
• The muhurtas then sit inside all of that, some of them blocked by it

You can see all five, with the exact minute each ends, on today's panchang.

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