The word panchang comes from the Sanskrit pancha-anga — “five limbs”. A panchang is the traditional Hindu almanac, and its five limbs are five separate measurements of the same sky: tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana. Together they describe the quality of a day, and for centuries they have decided when weddings are held, when journeys begin and when new ventures open their doors.
None of the five is arbitrary. Each is derived from the actual positions of the Sun and the Moon — which is why the panchang on Achaaryam is computed from those positions for each day, not copied from a printed table.
Tithi — the lunar day
A tithi is the time the Moon takes to move twelve degrees away from the Sun. Since the new moon, when Sun and Moon sit together, the Moon pulls ahead by roughly twelve degrees a day; thirty such steps complete a lunar month. The first fifteen, while the Moon waxes, form the shukla paksha (bright fortnight); the next fifteen, as it wanes, the krishna paksha (dark fortnight). Because the Moon’s speed varies, a tithi can run shorter or longer than a solar day — which is why festival dates shift each year. Ekadashi fasts, Purnima vrats and Amavasya tarpana are all fixed by tithi, never by the English date.
Vara — the weekday
Vara is simply the weekday, but each day belongs to a graha: Sunday to the Sun, Monday to the Moon, Tuesday to Mars, Wednesday to Mercury, Thursday to Jupiter, Friday to Venus and Saturday to Saturn. The lord of the day colours everything begun on it — which is why gemstones are first worn, and specific fasts observed, on the weekday of their planet.
Nakshatra — the lunar mansion
The ecliptic is divided into twenty-seven nakshatras of 13°20′ each, and the nakshatra of the day is the one the Moon currently occupies. The Moon spends roughly a day in each, completing the circuit in about twenty-seven days. Nakshatras are older than the twelve rashis in Indian usage, and they carry the finest grain of meaning: the nakshatra at birth is the janma nakshatra, from which the dasha sequence begins.
Yoga and karana
Yoga is the least intuitive limb: it is calculated by adding the longitudes of the Sun and the Moon and dividing the total into twenty-seven parts. Each of the twenty-seven yogas — from Vishkambha to Vaidhriti — is traditionally classed as auspicious or otherwise, and a few (Vyatipata, Vaidhriti) are avoided for new beginnings.
Karana is half a tithi — the time the Moon takes to gain six degrees on the Sun. There are eleven karanas, seven of which repeat through the month while four fixed ones appear only around the new moon. Of these, Vishti (also called Bhadra) is the one every muhurta text warns against.
Read together, the five limbs answer the question the panchang was built for: is this hour suited to what I intend to do? You can see all five, computed for today, on the Achaaryam panchang page.
