A panchang is the Hindu almanac of a day. The word means five limbs, and the five are the tithi, the vara, the nakshatra, the yoga and the karana. Together they describe where the Moon and the Sun stand, and from them families and priests choose a quiet time for a puja, a journey or a new beginning. This page gives today’s panchang for the city you pick, with the timings that go with it: sunrise, sunset, moonrise, Rahu kaal, Yamaganda, Gulika kaal, the Abhijit muhurat, choghadiya and hora.
Looking for the Jain panchang? It is on jain.nidarshanavedh.com/panchang/
The five limbs and how to read them
The tithi is the lunar day. The Moon gains 12 degrees on the Sun for each tithi, so a lunar month has 30 of them: 15 in the bright half (Shukla paksha, from the new Moon to the full Moon) and 15 in the dark half (Krishna paksha, from the full Moon back to the new Moon). A tithi is not 24 hours long. It can run from about 19 to about 26 hours, and it starts and ends at any hour of the day. For that reason the panchang gives the time at which each tithi ends, and the tithi that is running at sunrise names the day.
The vara is the weekday, from Sunday, ruled by the Sun, to Saturday, ruled by Saturn. In the Hindu reckoning the day begins at sunrise, not at midnight, which is why every timing on this page is counted from the local sunrise.
The nakshatra is the star group the Moon is passing through. The sky is divided into 27 equal parts of 13 degrees 20 minutes each, from Ashwini to Revati, and the Moon spends about a day in each. Like the tithi, a nakshatra ends at some hour of the day, and the panchang gives that hour. The nakshatra pages in the nakshatra section describe each of the 27.
The yoga is found by adding the positions of the Sun and the Moon and dividing the total into 27 parts of 13 degrees 20 minutes. There are 27 yogas, from Vishkambha to Vaidhriti, and each lasts roughly a day.
The karana is half a tithi, so there are 60 in a lunar month. Seven of them (Bava, Balava, Kaulava, Taitila, Garaja, Vanija and Vishti) repeat in turn, and four (Shakuni, Chatushpada, Naga and Kimstughna) come once a month around the new Moon. Vishti, also called Bhadra, is the karana that tradition advises against for starting something new.
When you read the table, take the tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana as the ones that begin at sunrise, with each one’s end time next to it. If an end time says “next day”, the tithi or nakshatra carries over past midnight into the following civil date. Where two are listed, the first ends during the day and the second takes over.
How these times are worked out
The positions of the Sun and the Moon come from the Swiss Ephemeris, and the zodiac is the sidereal one with the Lahiri ayanamsa, the same as on the rest of this site (see the method page). Sunrise and sunset are for the city’s own coordinates, with the Sun’s upper edge on the horizon, and times are on the city’s local clock with daylight saving included. They are cut to the minute, which is how Drik Panchang prints them. Months are named in both ways: amanta, where a month ends at the new Moon, and purnimanta, where it ends at the full Moon. Customs differ between regions and between families, and a local temple’s printed almanac is the right guide for your own observance.
Dates and times for festivals and vrats are on the festivals pages, which use the same engine. If you run a temple or community site there is also a free panchang widget to paste into your page.
Today’s panchang, city pages and tools
Pick a city in the box below. Each city page has the month calendar and the next festival or vrat. The pages for Rahu kaal, choghadiya and hora explain each timing and show today’s value for all 49 cities, and the any-place tool works out the panchang for any town and any date.