A printed calendar that shows the Hindu date beside the usual one is a small thing that many households still like to keep in the kitchen or the puja room. This tool builds one for any city and any month from 1951 to 2073, with up to twelve months at a time. Each month is laid out as a grid of days and prints on its own landscape page.
What each day shows
Every box has the date, the tithi that is running at local sunrise and the nakshatra at that moment, followed by any festival or vrat that falls on that day for your city. The tithi is written in short form, Sh for Shukla, the bright half, and Kr for Krishna, the dark half, so Sh Dashami is the tenth day of the waxing Moon. Purnima days are outlined and Amavasya days are shaded, so the two Moon phases are easy to find at a glance. Under the grid is the full list of the month’s observances, since a crowded box can show only the first few.
Above the grid, the heading names the lunar months that the calendar page covers, in both the amanta and purnimanta styles, and gives the Vikram Samvat and Shaka Samvat for that part of the year. Both are counted from the lunar new year in Chaitra, so the Vikram year in a calendar for February is one lower than the one in a calendar for October of the same Gregorian year, until the new year changes.
How it is worked out
The tool reads the Sun and Moon from the Swiss Ephemeris tables stored on this site, uses the Lahiri ayanamsa for the sidereal zodiac, and finds the sunrise at the place you choose. The tithi and nakshatra are those in force at that sunrise, which is how a daily panchang names the day. The festival and vrat days come from the same engine as the festival pages, so a date in this calendar matches the date on the page for your city.
Why the city matters
Sunrise sets the day, and sunrise changes from place to place. A tithi can be present at sunrise in Mumbai and over by sunrise in Melbourne, which is why a calendar for one city cannot be used in another without a check. The tool uses the time zone and daylight saving in force at your place on each date.
Printing it
Press the Print button under the form, or use your browser’s own print command. The page hides everything except the calendar, sets the paper to A4 landscape, and starts a new page for each month, so a twelve-month run gives twelve pages. Colour is not needed: the Purnima and Amavasya markings use an outline and a grey shade that still read in black and white. If your browser asks, switch on background graphics to keep the grey shading.
Where traditions differ
The calendar uses the Smarta rules and the amanta month names for festivals, as most printed calendars in Gujarat, Maharashtra and the south do, and shows the purnimanta names beside them for North Indian readers. Regional calendars can differ on a few festival days, by a day in either direction, because they take the day from sunrise, midday or evening according to custom, Vaishnava calendars keep some vrats a day later, and the Durga Puja days follow the Bengali reckoning, so Maha Navami can sit a day after the North Indian Navami and next to Dussehra. A tithi that begins and ends between two sunrises, called a kshaya tithi, never appears as a day’s tithi in the grid, though a vrat that falls on it is still listed. If your temple or family follows a particular almanac, treat this as a convenient companion to it.
See the Hindu calendar guide for the months and tithis in more detail, the Hindu date converter for a single date, and the panchang for any place and date for one day’s full detail.
Frequently asked questions
↳ Can I print more than one month?
Yes. Choose up to twelve months from the second box. Each month prints on its own page.
↳ Why does a box show one tithi when the tithi changes in the day?
The box shows the tithi running at local sunrise, as a daily panchang does. The change times for any one day are on the panchang page for that date.
↳ Which month name is used?
The heading shows both the amanta names and the purnimanta names, so readers from either tradition can find their month.
↳ Can I make a calendar for a city outside India?
Yes. The times and dates are worked out for your town or city, with its own sunrise and time zone.
↳ Why do some days show a long list of festivals?
Several observances can share one day, for example a monthly Purnima and a named festival. A box shows the first two and the list beneath the grid shows all of them.