Sankalp Generator: Your Puja Sankalp in Sanskrit

Pick the place of your puja, the date and the time you will take the sankalp, and this free tool writes out the sankalp in Sanskrit with every blank filled in for that moment: the samvatsara, the ayana, the ritu, the lunar month, the paksha, the tithi, the vara, the nakshatra, the yoga, the karana and the signs of the Moon, the Sun and Jupiter. You can add your name, your gotra and the name of the rite. Please read it with your family priest before the puja, because families and regions say the sankalp in their own ways.

How it works

The words come from an old print. The template is the snana sankalpa (the sankalp before the daily bath) printed in the Shukla Yajuh-shakhiya Karmakanda Pradipa of Anna Shastri Vare of Nashik, published by the Nirnaya Sagar Press, Bombay. We read it from the page image of the scan on the Internet Archive (scan leaf 367). The print leaves each changing word as amuka, “such and such”: amukanamni samvatsare, amukayane, amukartau, amukamase and so on. The tool puts the right name in each of those places, in the same form. After the nakshatra the print has the bare words yoge karane, “in the yoga, in the karana”, with no amuka of their own; the tool names the yoga and the karana of your moment there as well. The other fixed words are the print’s, in its order, set out as separate words where the print runs them together, with one slip of the type put right: the print reads puronokta where the sense needs puranokta, “spoken of in the puranas”. The print’s own place words name Nashik, so the tool leaves the place for you to say. It drops the closing words that belong to a bath in the Godavari and keeps the print’s last two, aham karishye, “I shall perform”, after the name of your rite.

Each blank follows a stated rule. The same book, in its chapter of general rules (scan leaf 72), says that the sankalp names the tithi running at the time of the sankalp, and, quoting the Kalatattvavivechana, that the lunar month is named with the month ending at the new moon south of the Vindhya hills and at the full moon north of them. The tool follows both. The rest:

• Samvatsara: the sixty-year cycle as it is counted south of the Narmada. Sewell and Dikshit, The Indian Calendar (London, 1896), Article 62, give the rule: add 11 to the current Shaka year and divide by 60; the remainder, counted from Prabhava as 1, is the year. Their Table XII gives the sixty names. By this rule Parabhava, number 40, began with Gudi Padwa on 19 March 2026, and Plavanga, number 41, begins on 7 April 2027 (dates at Mumbai).
• Ayana: the Surya Siddhanta (chapter 14, verse 9) counts six months of uttarayana from the Sun’s entry into Makara and six of dakshinayana from its entry into Karka. The tool uses the Sun’s sidereal sign, the same moment our Sankranti calculator gives.
• Ritu: by the lunar month, as the Sushruta Samhita lists the seasons (Sutrasthana, chapter 6: Tapas and Tapasya, that is Magha and Phalguna, are Shishira, Madhu and Madhava, that is Chaitra and Vaishakha, are Vasanta, and so on), which is how panchangs print the ritu.
• Vara: the weekday begins at sunrise (Sewell and Dikshit, Article 5), so a sankalp taken before sunrise names the weekday of the day before.
• Tithi, nakshatra, yoga, karana and the three signs: worked out for the moment you give, from the NASA JPL DE440 tables with the Lahiri ayanamsa, the same as our panchang for any place.

Reading the result

The first line names the year, season, month, tithi and weekday in plain words. Below it is the sankalp in Devanagari and the same words in roman letters, with buttons to copy or print it. The table then takes the sankalp part by part: what each part says, what it means, and how the tool filled it, with the end time of the tithi and the nakshatra so you can see whether they change before your puja. If you type your name and gotra, they appear after the words of place and time and before the purpose, gotra first and then the name, which is where Vasu’s Daily Practice of the Hindus (1918) puts them in its bath sankalp; the print itself names neither. Typing them in Devanagari gives the cleanest Sanskrit. If the clock shows your time twice on that date, because the clocks are set back then, a note says which of the two the tool used and what would change at the other.

Where traditions differ

• The samvatsara of the north. North Indian panchangs name the samvatsara by Jupiter’s mean motion, not by the southern count, and the two names differ: Sewell and Dikshit wrote in 1896 that the northern samvatsara had moved 12 places ahead of the southern. This tool gives only the southern name, which is the count of the print’s own region. If your family follows a north Indian panchang, ask your priest for the year’s name.
• Which tithi to name. The print says to name the tithi at the time of the sankalp. A daily panchang lists the tithi at sunrise. When the two differ, the table shows both.
• Amanta or purnimanta. Choose the month naming your family uses. The two agree in the bright half and differ by one month in the dark half; the page on amanta and purnimanta explains why.
• The season and the solstice. Some almanacs count the ritu by the Sun’s sign, and some count the ayana from the solstice in the tropical zodiac, which comes earlier in the year. The tool follows the lunar month for the ritu and the sidereal sign for the ayana, as stated above.
• The words themselves. Prints and priests word the sankalp differently. Vasu’s 1918 book, for one, opens its bath sankalp with Om Vishnuh, Om tat sat and names only the month, the fortnight, the tithi, the gotra and the name. A shorter or longer form is not wrong. The tool follows one print and says which.

What it does not do

It does not choose a muhurat or say whether a day is good for your puja; for that, use the muhurat finder. It does not give the north Indian samvatsara name. It does not translate your name or gotra into Sanskrit; it keeps them exactly as you type them. Outside India the words Jambudvipe Bharatakhande do not fit, and the tool says so: ask your priest how your temple names the place. Nothing you type is sent to us. Your name and gotra stay in this browser: the email check holds what you typed until you come back from the email link, and the tool keeps them for next time only if you tick the box.

Frequently asked questions