Timings on this page are calculated for Howrah's own longitude and local sunrise — not inherited from Kolkata — so sunrise-based windows like Tithi boundaries, Rahu Kaal, and Choghadiya should be read locally.
Howrah is located at 22.5958°N, 88.2636°E in West Bengal, India. Times on this page follow the Asia/Kolkata timezone.
Hindu calendrical reckoning treats the day as beginning at sunrise. The vara, or weekday, flips at local sunrise — not at midnight as in the civil calendar. So a ceremony performed at 3 a.m. on a civil Tuesday is still classified as Monday's vara in the Panchang. This is why the same wall-clock time can sit on different varas depending on which framework you read.
Each vara is presided over by a graha: Sunday (Ravi / Sun), Monday (Soma / Moon), Tuesday (Mangala / Mars), Wednesday (Budha / Mercury), Thursday (Guru / Jupiter), Friday (Shukra / Venus), and Saturday (Shani / Saturn). The seven-day week itself takes its order from the classical Hindu and Hellenistic planetary hours.
Monday (Soma) and Thursday (Guru) are widely held favourable for most new beginnings, devotion, and learning. Sunday (Ravi) is preferred for authority and foundation acts. Wednesday (Budha) and Friday (Shukra) are favoured for trade, communication, and ceremony. Tuesday (Mangala) and Saturday (Shani) are flagged cautious for new ventures, though each has acts they suit — Tuesday for matters of courage, Saturday for ancestor rites and discipline.
Vara is one of the five Panchang elements a muhurat is built from, alongside tithi, nakshatra, yoga, and karana. A muhurat for a wedding or griha pravesh requires the vara to be compatible with the act in question. A favourable tithi-nakshatra combination on a cautioned vara is often deferred to a more favourable weekday if the calendar allows. See today's vara on the Today Panchang page.
A paksha is a fortnight of the lunar month. Shukla paksha is the bright fortnight, from new moon to full moon, during which the moon waxes from invisible to fully illuminated. Krishna paksha is the dark fortnight, from full moon back to new moon, during which the moon wanes from full back to invisible. Every tithi belongs to one paksha or the other.
In shukla paksha the moon rises in the afternoon and is visible through the evening sky; by Purnima it is overhead at midnight. In krishna paksha the moon rises later each night and is visible mostly in the second half of the night; by Amavasya it rises at sunrise and is washed out by the sun.
Festivals of beginning, increase, and prosperity usually fall in shukla paksha: Ram Navami, Akshaya Tritiya, Vijayadashami, Guru Purnima, Sharad Purnima. Festivals of remembrance, ancestor rites, and the fierce divine usually fall in krishna paksha: Mahashivratri, Janmashtami, Diwali night, and the entire Pitru Paksha of Bhadrapada. Ekadashi vrata falls in both pakshas, twice every lunar month.
Tradition assigns a broadly favourable cast to shukla paksha — growth, beginning, increase — and a contemplative cast to krishna paksha — completion, release, ancestor rites. The astronomy is symmetric; this is the cultural reading, not a hard rule.
The Panchang states the paksha alongside the tithi, for example: "Paksha: Shukla, Tithi: Tritiya till 14:22, then Chaturthi." You read this as the third lunar day of the bright fortnight transitioning to the fourth at 14:22. See Shukla Paksha vs Krishna Paksha in the Learn section for the full article.
Both conventions use the same twelve lunar month names and the same astronomical events. They differ only in where the boundary between two months falls. In the purnimanta convention a lunar month ends at Purnima (full moon); the next month begins the morning after. In the amanta convention a lunar month ends at Amavasya (new moon); the next month begins the morning after. The consequence is that the same tithi can sit in different named months depending on the convention.
Purnimanta is used in most of North India: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, and the Hindi-speaking belt broadly. Amanta is used in most of South India (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala) along with Maharashtra and Gujarat. Bengal, Odisha, and Assam use solar reckoning for the calendar year but read lunar months in purnimanta convention for festivals.
Take Mahashivratri, observed on the Krishna Chaturdashi just before Amavasya. In the amanta convention this Krishna Chaturdashi belongs to the month of Magha. In the purnimanta convention the same Krishna Chaturdashi belongs to the month of Phalguna. The tithi, the paksha, and the calendar date are identical; only the named month differs.
Trust paksha and tithi before the named month. If the festival you are looking up matches on paksha, tithi, and nakshatra it is the same festival even if the month label differs. The astronomy never differs between the two conventions; only the month label can.
Bengal, Odisha, and Assam follow a solar calendar for the year (the Bengali San is solar, anchored to the sun's entry into Aries) while reading lunar months in purnimanta convention for festival dates. A Bengali Panchang therefore looks different from both a North Indian and a South Indian Panchang in its month framing, even though it agrees with both on tithi and paksha.
In order: Chaitra, Vaishakha, Jyeshtha, Ashadha, Shravana, Bhadrapada, Ashwin, Kartika, Margashirsha, Pausha, Magha, and Phalguna. Chaitra is the first lunar month of the Hindu calendar year and roughly corresponds to March–April in the civil calendar.
In the older amanta convention, the lunar month takes its name from the solar zodiac sign the sun is in at the new moon that begins the month. The new moon when the sun is in Pisces begins Chaitra; the new moon when the sun is in Aries begins Vaishakha; and so on. This is how the lunar and solar reckonings stay roughly aligned across the year.
Because twelve lunar months are about eleven days shorter than a solar year, the Hindu calendar inserts an extra lunar month — called adhika masa or a leap month — roughly once every three years to keep the lunar and solar cycles aligned. The adhika masa takes the name of the regular month it precedes, prefixed with adhika. Ritually it is treated as a month suspended outside the normal cycle.
Abhijit muhurat is the 48-minute window around solar noon — broadly the half-hour before and after midday. It is considered one of the most universally favourable windows for most acts and is the recommended default when no specific muhurat has been calculated. Some traditions avoid it on Wednesdays.
Brahma muhurat is the 48-minute window ending at sunrise — the last quarter of the night before dawn. Tradition holds it the most favourable window of the day for prayer, meditation, scriptural study, and any inward practice. The exact time shifts daily with sunrise and varies by city.
Vijaya muhurat is a window in the early afternoon traditionally considered favourable for acts that need to succeed against opposition: legal filings, contests, negotiations, and any matter where a counter-party may push back. The exact window depends on the day's sunrise and sunset.
Amrit Kalam (also called Amrit Siddhi yoga) is a bonus-favourable window formed when certain weekday-nakshatra combinations co-occur: for example, Sunday with Hasta nakshatra, Monday with Mrigashira, and similar pairings for each day of the week. When present, it is flagged on the Panchang as broadly auspicious for new beginnings, overriding many ordinary cautions.
Abhijit is a 28th nakshatra (the star Vega) that sits between Uttarashada and Shravana but is not used in the standard 27-nakshatra Panchang reckoning. It is invoked only in the calculation of certain muhurats — most notably Abhijit muhurat at midday — which takes its name from it. In the standard moon-position scheme it is omitted to keep each nakshatra a clean 13 degrees 20 minutes.
Rahu kaal is a 90-minute window each day assigned to the shadow planet Rahu. The window rotates by weekday: Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon, and so on; the exact span is computed from the day's actual sunrise and sunset. New beginnings, signing contracts, starting journeys, and major purchases are widely avoided in Rahu kaal.
Gulika kaal and Yamaganda are two more daily inauspicious windows, each rotating by weekday in the same way as Rahu kaal. Gulika is assigned to Gulika (a satellite point of Saturn); Yamaganda is assigned to Yama. Together with Rahu kaal they form the three classical daily windows to avoid for new beginnings.
Varjyam is a short window each day, computed from nakshatra-specific tables. It is considered unsuitable for journeys and for new ventures whose outcome should not be left unfinished. The window is brief — typically under two hours — but worth checking before fixing a departure time.
Durmuhurta literally means "bad muhurat" and refers to two short windows that occur each day — one in the daytime and one at night — flagged as inauspicious for new beginnings. The windows shift by weekday and are computed independently of Rahu kaal and Gulika. A complete Panchang shows all of these alongside the favourable windows.
Choghadiya (literally "four units of time") divides the daylight period into eight roughly 90-minute slots and the night into eight more, for sixteen slots total. Each slot carries one of seven labels and the pattern rotates by weekday. The slot lengths vary slightly with the season because they are derived from the actual sunrise and sunset, not from clock hours.
The seven labels are Amrit (nectar — very favourable), Shubh (auspicious — favourable), Labh (gain — favourable for trade and profit), Char (movement — neutral, good for travel), Rog (illness — flagged), Kaal (time/death — flagged), and Udveg (anxiety — flagged). The three favourable, one neutral, and three flagged slots are arranged in a repeating sequence determined by the weekday.
Choghadiya is the right tool for routine, day-of decisions: starting a journey, beginning a trade negotiation, sitting an exam, opening a new file at work. For major life events — weddings, griha pravesh, naming ceremonies, vehicle purchases — a full tithi-vara-nakshatra muhurat from a priest is the right input, with choghadiya only as a secondary check.
Each of the twenty-seven nakshatras is divided into four equal quarters of 3 degrees 20 minutes called padas. There are 108 padas in total across the 360-degree zodiac — the same number as on a japa mala. Padas appear in a Panchang as a hyphenated suffix, for example Rohini-2, meaning the second pada of Rohini.
Each of the 108 padas is assigned a Sanskrit syllable in the classical nakshatra-syllable table. In the namkaran (naming) ceremony, the syllable corresponding to the moon's pada at the moment of birth is traditionally used as the first syllable of the child's name. A priest computes this from the exact birth time and location.
Each nakshatra is classified into one of three temperamental groups, called ganas: deva (divine — refined, gentle), manushya (human — balanced), and rakshasa (fierce — intense, willful). Gana is one of the axes used in marriage compatibility matching.
Ashtakoota is the eight-axis compatibility scoring system used in classical Hindu marriage matching. The eight koota are varna, vashya, tara, yoni, graha-maitri, gana, bhakoot, and nadi. Each axis is scored from the birth nakshatra of the bride and groom; the total is out of 36. The match is traditionally read by a priest or astrologer, not from a score alone.
In the Vimshottari dasha system, each nakshatra is assigned a ruling planet whose period (mahadasha) begins at birth based on the moon's nakshatra. The rulers cycle Ketu — Venus — Sun — Moon — Mars — Rahu — Jupiter — Saturn — Mercury across groups of three nakshatras and repeat through the 27. The starting dasha and the time remaining in it are computed from the moon's position within its nakshatra at birth.
Ayanamsha is the angular difference between the tropical zodiac (the framework used by Western astronomy, anchored to the vernal equinox) and the sidereal zodiac (the framework used by Hindu astronomy, anchored to fixed stars). Because of the precession of the equinoxes the two zodiacs drift apart by about 50 arc-seconds per year. Every sidereal Panchang must choose an ayanamsha value; small differences in that value shift every nakshatra and tithi end-time slightly.
Three independent sources of small variation: the chosen ayanamsha (Lahiri, Raman, Krishnamurti, and others), the ephemeris underlying the planetary positions, and the reference moment for tithi assignment (sunrise vs sunset). Differences are usually only a few minutes for tithi and nakshatra end-times and a different month label across purnimanta and amanta conventions.
The three most widely used are Lahiri (also called Chitrapaksha — the Government of India's official ayanamsha for the Indian national calendar, used by most modern Panchangs), Raman (used by followers of B. V. Raman's school), and Krishnamurti (used in the KP system of astrology). The numerical difference between them is small but compounds over centuries.
