Choose your birth nakshatra above, or enter your birth details and let the tool find it, then give the place you are in and a date. This free calculator names your bird among the five of the Pancha Pakshi tradition, gives first the clock times when it rules or eats, the watches the tradition counts for beginning work, and then shows, for each of the five watches of the day and the five of the night, whether your bird is ruling, eating, walking, sleeping or dying, with the times on your local clock. A second table shows all five birds side by side.
How it works
Pancha Pakshi means the five birds: the Hawk, the Owl, the Crow, the Cock and the Peacock. This tool follows the tables printed by P. V. Jagadisa Ayyar in South Indian Customs (Madras, 1925), pages 102 to 109, where he describes Pancha Pakshi Sastram as a treatise forming part of Hindu astronomical science, with the nakshatras under their Tamil names.
Your bird comes from your birth nakshatra (Ayyar, pages 104 to 105): Ashwini to Mrigashira belong to the Hawk, Ardra to Purva Phalguni to the Owl, Uttara Phalguni to Vishakha to the Crow, Anuradha to Uttara Ashadha to the Cock, and Shravana to Revati to the Peacock. If you give your birth details, the nakshatra is found from the Moon at your birth, from the NASA JPL DE440 tables used across this site, sidereal Lahiri.
The day is then cut into five equal watches from sunrise to sunset, and the night into five from sunset to the next sunrise, using the sunrise and sunset at your place as our panchang pages work them out. In each watch every bird is in one of five states. Which state depends on the weekday and on the fortnight, bright (Shukla paksha) or dark (Krishna paksha), and Ayyar gives a table for each (pages 106 to 109). The fortnight is the one running at sunrise, the way a panchang names the day, and the night belongs to the weekday whose sunrise began it.
Reading the result
The first line gives the clock times of the watches when your bird rules or eats on that day, with watches that follow each other joined into one stretch; the tables below give every watch. Ayyar ranks the states from strongest to weakest as ruling, eating, walking, sleeping and dying. In his account the watches when your bird rules or eats are the times to set out on a journey, begin farm work, ask a favour or buy and sell; walking is the next best; and the watches when it sleeps or dies are not chosen for a new undertaking. The tool colours the states to match. It is a way of choosing an hour, like the hora or choghadiya, and not a forecast.
If the bright or dark fortnight changes during the day, at the full or the new moon, the tool says when. Ayyar does not say what to do then, so the tool keeps the fortnight that was running at sunrise for the whole day and night.
Where traditions differ
Pancha Pakshi tables differ between books, and a Tamil almanac may give your bird another state in the same watch. This tool follows Ayyar’s tables only and names them, so you can compare. Books also differ on the birth bird. Ayyar gives one list by nakshatra (pages 104 to 105), and the tool follows it. Many other books and almanacs also use the fortnight of birth: for a birth in the bright fortnight they give the same birds as Ayyar (some call the Hawk the Vulture), and for a birth in the dark fortnight they count the birds in reverse, so Ashwini to Mrigashira is the Peacock rather than the Hawk, Ardra to Purva Phalguni the Cock, Anuradha to Uttara Ashadha the Owl and Shravana to Revati the Hawk, while Uttara Phalguni to Vishakha stays the Crow. If you were born in the dark fortnight, such a book may give you another bird. Ayyar also describes the watches as divisions of the twelve hours of the day and of the night; the tool takes the real daytime and night at your place, so in summer the day watches are longer than the night watches, and in winter shorter.
One correction is made to the printed tables. In the table for the bright fortnight, the fifth night watch of Saturday repeats the first watch, which would put every bird in the same state in the first and the fifth watch, so that each bird would miss one of the five states that night. In every other row of the four tables, each bird passes through the five states in a fixed order, and the fifth watch here is set by that order: the Hawk eating, the Owl sleeping, the Crow walking, the Cock dying and the Peacock ruling.
What it does not do
It does not forecast events, and it does not combine the birds with the rest of a muhurta: the tithi, the nakshatra of the day and the other checks still matter. It follows one published set of tables, not every school’s. It needs a sunrise and a sunset, so it does not work near the poles on days the Sun does not rise or set. Dates from 1900 to 2074 can be entered.
For the other ways of choosing an hour, see the hora calculator and today’s choghadiya. To find your birth nakshatra, use the nakshatra calculator.
Frequently asked questions
↳ What is my Pancha Pakshi bird?
It comes from your birth nakshatra. In Ayyar's table Ashwini to Mrigashira are the Hawk, Ardra to Purva Phalguni the Owl, Uttara Phalguni to Vishakha the Crow, Anuradha to Uttara Ashadha the Cock, and Shravana to Revati the Peacock. Many other books also use the fortnight of birth and count the birds in reverse for a birth in the dark fortnight, so they can give you another bird; this tool follows Ayyar's single list.
↳ What are the five states?
Ruling, eating, walking, sleeping and dying, in Ayyar's order from strongest to weakest. Ruling and eating are the times he gives for beginning things; sleeping and dying are not chosen for a new undertaking.
↳ How long is a watch?
One fifth of the daytime or of the night at your place. Near the equinoxes both are about the same length; in summer the day watches are longer and the night watches shorter.
↳ Why does my Tamil almanac show a different state?
Pancha Pakshi tables differ between books. This tool follows the tables printed by P. V. Jagadisa Ayyar in 1925 and says so; your almanac may follow another text.
↳ Does the fortnight matter?
Yes. Ayyar gives separate tables for the bright and the dark fortnight, and for each weekday. The tool uses the fortnight running at sunrise and says when it changes during the day.
↳ Do I need my birth time?
Not if you know your birth nakshatra: choose it from the list. Otherwise the date and place are often enough; if the Moon changed nakshatra on your birth date, the tool shows both possibilities.