A muhurat is a stretch of time that tradition judges well suited to a particular act. The word is also a unit: in the old reckoning a day and a night together hold thirty muhurats, each a little under fifty minutes. In everyday speech it means the right moment to do something that matters: to marry, to enter a new home, to name a child, to open a shop. Families have asked an astrologer for it for centuries, and the question is still asked in most Hindu homes before any large step.
This section answers the first half of that question, the half that can be worked out from the sky and checked by anyone. For each of eight events it lists the days that meet the conditions set out in the classical rules, with the time window within each day. It does not answer the second half, which belongs to your astrologer: whether the day suits the particular people involved.
The five limbs of the day
The classical rules read the day through the five parts of the panchang. The tithi is the lunar day, each one twelve degrees of the Moon’s lead over the Sun. The vara is the weekday. The nakshatra is the lunar mansion the Moon stands in, one of twenty-seven. The yoga is a measure of the combined movement of the Sun and Moon, and the karana is half a tithi. You can see all five for any day on the panchang pages.
For most events the rules pick favourable nakshatras first, because the Moon’s star carries the most weight. They then trim the list by weekday and tithi, avoid a few yogas and karanas, and exclude certain months, whether lunar or solar. Finally they ask that Jupiter and Venus, the planets the texts treat as protectors of marriage and the home, are not hidden in the Sun’s glare. That hiding is called asta.
What the lists are built on
Every table in this section uses one method. It takes the Muhurta Chintamani of Ramacharya Daivajna, written about 1600 CE, as its primary text. That book is a compilation: it gathers the rules of earlier samhitas, among them those of Narada, Vasishtha and Garga, and arranges them by subject. Its chapters (prakaranas) cover marriage, the building and entering of houses, the sacraments of childhood, journeys and more. The box on each page names the chapter its rules come from.
Three of the eight events are not ones the text treats: buying a vehicle, buying property and opening a business. For those we use the nearest rule it does give, and each such page says in plain words that it is the classical rule nearest to the event, not a rule written for it.
The text is always the same; only the place changes. Positions of the Sun, Moon and planets come from the Swiss Ephemeris with the Lahiri ayanamsa, and sunrise is worked out for the place asked about. The method page describes the astronomy behind the whole site.
Using the pages
Start with the event page you need. Each one explains what the event is, which rules the text gives, and what the table shows. The table covers New Delhi from 2 October 2026 to 31 December 2027, grouped by month. If you live elsewhere, the muhurat finder runs the same method for any town and any dates, because sunrise and the times at which a tithi or nakshatra changes move with the place.
Read the table as a short list of candidates, not as a verdict. A day is listed when every condition is met for part of it, and the window is the time inside the day when they are met together. Windows that begin after midnight belong to the previous day, because the panchang day runs from sunrise to sunrise.
Where your own chart comes in
A list like this checks the day, not the family. The things it cannot check are the ones a family astrologer weighs most: tarabala, which compares the star of the day with the birth star of the person; chandrabala, which looks at where the Moon stands against the birth Moon; and lagna shuddhi, the choice of the rising sign at the exact hour. Two people can share a perfectly good day on the list and still need different hours.
For that reason we never describe a listed day as lucky or as a guarantee. It is a day that meets the textual conditions. Treat it as the shortlist you take to your astrologer or family priest, who will also know your custom, because families and regions keep their own variations.
Why published lists differ
If you compare this section with a printed almanac or another website, you will often find differences. Almanacs follow different lists of favourable nakshatras and tithis, give weekday and tithi different weight, count months from the new moon or the full moon, and may work out the setting of Venus and Jupiter with a modern visibility calculation instead of the classical degrees. Each is a defensible choice. We state ours on every page so that you can compare like with like and ask your astrologer which reading your family follows.
Related pages
The same panchang elements are explained in the tithi pages and the Hindu calendar section. For the ceremonies themselves see the sixteen samskaras, the pages on marriage and on naming, and for exact dates of festivals use the festival calendar.