Muhurat · Foundations

How to Read a Panchang: The Five Limbs, Explained in Plain Words

By Dr. R.P. Sharma, Vedic astrologer since 1979 · Ph.D. & M.A. Acharya

Panchang means "five limbs," and that is exactly what the document is: five parallel measurements of the same day, each answering a different question about the sky. People treat the Panchang as either holy mystery or grandmother's almanac; it is neither. It is a calendar with five columns, and anyone can learn to read it in an evening. Here are the five, in plain words.

Panchang readers are asking right now: Chandra Grahan 28 August 2026 — grahan time in India and the sutak verdict.

Tithi — the lunar day

A tithi is the time the Moon takes to gain twelve degrees on the Sun. Thirty tithis make a lunar month: fifteen of the waxing fortnight (Shukla Paksha), from new moon toward full, and fifteen of the waning (Krishna Paksha) back again. Because the Moon's speed varies, a tithi does not fit the civil day — it may begin mid-morning and end the next dawn, which is why the Panchang always states "Tithi up to such-and-such time." Festivals, fasts and muhurats lean on tithi more than on the English date, which is also why festival dates wander across the calendar from year to year.

Vara — the weekday

The simplest limb: the seven-day week, each day ruled by its planet — Sun through Saturn, Sunday through Saturday. Vara sets the tone for the daily timing systems: it decides which Choghadiya opens the day, where Rahu Kaal falls, and which planet takes the first hora. One small technicality worth knowing: in the Panchang the day runs sunrise to sunrise, not midnight to midnight, so the early hours before dawn still belong to the previous vara.

Nakshatra — the Moon's mansion

The zodiac divides into twenty-seven nakshatras, and this limb records which one the Moon occupies. It is the Panchang's most personal column: the nakshatra of your birth moment becomes your janma nakshatra, the basis of naming, matching and much else. Day to day, certain nakshatras are preferred for certain undertakings — a consideration every calculated muhurat weighs.

Yoga and Karana — the two technical limbs

Yoga is a calculated value: the combined longitudes of Sun and Moon, divided into twenty-seven named segments. A few yogas are treated as inauspicious for beginnings and are quietly avoided in muhurat work. Karana is half a tithi — sixty karanas fill the lunar month, built from seven repeating ("movable") karanas and four fixed ones that appear once each near the new moon. Of the fixed four, tradition handles Vishti — commonly called Bhadra — with particular care, avoiding it for auspicious beginnings; you will often hear a muhurat rejected simply with the words "Bhadra hai."

Reading them together

No limb rules alone. A fine tithi with a poor yoga, or a lovely nakshatra sitting inside Bhadra, is a mixed day — and weighing such mixtures honestly is precisely the craft of muhurat, described in full in our muhurat guide. For everyday purposes you need far less: glance at the tithi to know where the fortnight stands, note the day's caution windows, and take the good slots when they are free. Five minutes with the morning Panchang — ours is summarised on the daily horoscope page — is the entire practice, and it has served this civilisation for a very long time.