Panchaanga
The panchaanga is a moment described by five measures of time, its five limbs: pancha means five and anga a limb. The word also names the almanac that lists those limbs day by day. Each limb has its own page here, and this one puts them together.
The five limbs
- Tithi (lunar day): which twelve-degree step of the Moon's gain on the Sun is running.
- Vaara (weekday): the weekday of the sunrise that opened the Vedic day.
- Nakshatra (constellation): which of the 27 nakshatras the Moon is in.
- Sun-Moon yoga: which of 27 equal parts the sum of the Sun's and the Moon's longitudes falls in.
- Karana: which half of the tithi is running.
Four of the five come from the Sun and the Moon alone, so at a given instant they are the same everywhere on Earth. Only the vaara depends on the place, since it is counted from the local sunrise. The ayanamsa touches them unevenly too: the tithi and the karana measure the Moon against the Sun, so the ayanamsa drops out of them, while the nakshatra and the Sun-Moon yoga shift with it.
An almanac
A tithi, a nakshatra, a Sun-Moon yoga or a karana can change at any hour, so a calendar of whole days cannot hold them. That is the job of the Indian almanac, printed year by year and itself called a panchaanga: day by day it lists which limbs run and the hour each one changes, beside where the grahas (planets) stand. The chart page does the same for a single moment.
Muhurta
A muhurta is a time picked for starting something: a journey, a building, a marriage. The panchaanga is where the choice begins, and a good muhurta needs every one of its limbs to be favourable, not just one or two. Which limbs are favourable for what is a subject of its own, and hora does not pick muhurtas.
A worked example
On 1 January 2000 at 12:00 UT, at Greenwich (see the chart), hora gives these five limbs:
- Tithi: Krishna Ekadasi (26), lord Mars, from 05:34:43 to 07:50:31 on 2 January.
- Vaara: Saturday, lord Saturn, from sunrise at 08:05:47 to the next at 08:05:41 on 2 January.
- Nakshatra: Swaati (15), lord Rahu, from 10:37:39 on 31 December 1999 to 13:03:25.
- Sun-Moon yoga: Dhriti (8), from 07:06:45 to 07:43:37 on 2 January.
- Karana: Bava, from 05:34:43 to 18:40:01.
The tithi and its karana started together, since Bava is the first half of Krishna Ekadasi. The vaara runs from sunrise to sunrise. The nakshatra is about to end: an hour after noon the Moon leaves Swaati, while the other limbs last into the evening or the next morning.
In the chart
On the chart page the panchaanga's heading links to this page, and each limb's value to that limb's own page. The lord column gives the lords of the tithi, the vaara and the hora, and the nakshatra's Vimsottari lord. Two more lines sit with the five, though they are not limbs: the hora and the lunar month. The table below gives when each limb started and when it ends; the vaara's start and end are the sunrises of the Vedic day above it.
Next comes the ayanamsa: how far the nirayana (sidereal) zodiac, where the grahas' longitudes are measured, stands from the sayana (tropical) one.
Book reference: P.V.R. Narasimha Rao, Vedic Astrology: An Integrated Approach, chapter 1, § 1.3.12. Where to get the book