Hindu Date Converter

Two conversions in one tool

The first form turns a date on the calendar you use every day into its Hindu date: the tithi, the paksha (bright or dark half), the lunar month named in both the amanta and purnimanta ways, and the Vikram and Shaka year numbers. The second form goes the other way. Give it a tithi, a lunar month and a Gregorian year, and it names the day on which that tithi falls. Both are worked out in your browser from the Swiss Ephemeris tables, with the sidereal Lahiri zodiac.

A Hindu date is not a single fixed label for a day. It depends on the place, because the tithi is read at sunrise and sunrise differs from city to city, and it depends on the almanac tradition. That is why the tool asks for a place, and why it prints the end time of the tithi along with the name.

How the date to Hindu date conversion works

The tool finds sunrise at your place on the date you give. At that instant it measures the angle between the Moon and the Sun, which gives the tithi: thirty steps of 12 degrees, numbered Shukla Pratipada to Purnima and Krishna Pratipada to Amavasya. The lunar month comes from the new moons around the date. Months are named by the amanta rule, from one new moon to the next, and the purnimanta name is shown beside it. The two agree for the bright half and differ by one month for the dark half.

The year numbers follow the tradition each belongs to. The Vikram Samvat of north India and the Shaka Samvat both change at Chaitra Shukla Pratipada in spring, and the Shaka year is 135 less than the Vikram year. The Gujarati Vikram Samvat changes the day after Diwali, at Kartika Shukla Pratipada. The pages on Vikram Samvat and Shaka Samvat explain them further.

How the Hindu date to date conversion works

For a tithi in a lunar month, the tool lists the stretch of time in which that tithi runs, for the regular month of that name in the year you give. A tithi usually lasts around a day, and it is dated to the first sunrise at which it is present. If it begins and ends between two sunrises, no sunrise falls in it. The tool then gives the day on which it begins and says so. If the tithi covers two sunrises, it names the first day and mentions the second.

If the month has an Adhika repeat in that year, the date given is in the regular month, which is the one festivals and family observances normally use. You can read about the repeated month on the Adhika masa page.

Reading amanta and purnimanta

Choose the naming your family uses. A dark-half tithi in the purnimanta month of, say, Kartika is the same day as the same tithi in the amanta month of Ashwina. The tool handles the conversion for you, and the amanta and purnimanta page tells the story of why both exist.

Where traditions differ

Almanacs differ in small ways. Some keep a tithi on the day it is present at midday or at a specific period rather than at sunrise, as many festival rules do. Some regions, such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, follow a solar calendar for civil dates and use the lunar tithi mainly for religious observance. A date given here should be treated as the date by the common sunrise rule, and a family or temple that follows another custom is right to follow it. For festival dates computed with their own rules, use the festival dates tool, and for the full day see the panchang for any place.

What it cannot tell you

The tool converts dates. It does not say whether a day is good or bad for anything. For that, see the muhurat finder.

Frequently asked questions