> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.jyotiguide.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Panchāng: Reading the Five-Limbed Vedic Daily Almanac
> Browse the five-limbed Vedic almanac day by day, track festivals and fasts, find auspicious windows, and understand the Hindu leap month.
The **Panchāng** (literally "five limbs") is the traditional Hindu almanac — a day-by-day record of the sky's state, used for everything from selecting an auspicious moment (*muhūrta*) to tracking when a festival or fast falls. This tab computes a full Panchāng for any location: browse a whole month at a glance, then drill into a single date to see its five limbs, its sunrise and sunset, and its auspicious and inauspicious time windows. The underlying astronomy — lunar months, *tithis*, sunrise/sunset — follows standard treatments such as V. P. Jain's *Elements of Astronomy*.
## Choosing a place and date
Set the **place** in the location field (the tab defaults to a sensible starting location and shows today's date). Navigate months with the left and right arrows. The calendar view marks **today**, shows a small **moon-phase icon** on each date, flags special days like **Ekādaśī**, and previews the next upcoming festival:
```text theme={null}
Today · Wed 17 Jun — Jyeshtha · Shukla Tritiya
Punarvasu nakshatra · Budhavara (Mercury) · ↑ 06:00 · ↓ 19:17
Next: Guru Purnima · Wed 29 Jul
```
Click any date to open its full day-detail panel.
## The five limbs
The "five limbs" are the five quantities that together define a Vedic day. Each one changes at its own pace — rarely on the stroke of midnight or sunrise — so the day-detail panel reports not just the value but the **clock time at which it transitions**.
| Limb | What it is | Sample (Wed 17 Jun) |
| ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| **Tithi** | The lunar day — the Moon's angular gain over the Sun in 12° steps. There are 30 per lunar month, split into the waxing (*śukla*) and waning (*kṛṣṇa*) fortnights. | Tritiyā → 21:39, then Chaturthī |
| **Vāra** | The weekday, each ruled by a planet. | Budhavāra (Mercury / Wednesday) |
| **Nakṣatra** | The Moon's lunar mansion (see [Nakṣatras](/concepts/nakshatras-and-padas)). | Punarvasu → 13:37, then Pushya |
| **Yoga** | A value derived from the **sum** of Sun and Moon longitudes, divided into 27 segments of 13°20′ each. | Dhruva → 20:51, then Vyāghāta |
| **Karaṇa** | Half a tithi; 11 karaṇas cycle through the month. | Taitila → 11:12, Gara → 21:39, Vaṇija |
The header line in the panel condenses the most-used three items into a quick reference:
> Jyeshtha · Shukla paksha · Budhavara
Each limb is displayed with its **transition time** — for example, *Punarvasu → 13:37 · Pushya* means Punarvasu runs until 1:37 pm, at which point Pushya begins. This precision matters for *muhūrta*: the quality of a moment can shift partway through the day, and an election made in the morning may differ from one made in the evening even if both fall on the same date.
## Sunrise, sunset, and auspicious windows
Because the Vedic day begins at sunrise and most calculations are reckoned from it, the day-detail panel gives **sunrise and sunset** for the selected place. It derives several named time windows used in electional astrology (*muhūrta*):
```text theme={null}
Sunrise · Sunset 06:00 · 19:17
Pradosha 19:17 – 21:26
Nishitha 00:18 – 01:00
```
* **Pradoṣa** — the twilight window immediately after sunset, considered auspicious for certain observances, especially those associated with Śiva.
* **Niśītha** — the window around midnight, significant for some rituals and festival observances (for example, the birth-time celebrations of Janmāṣṭamī).
Both windows are computed from the actual sunrise and sunset at your chosen location, so they shift with both latitude and season.
## Festivals, Ekādaśī, and fasts
The month view marks recurring observances across the calendar. **Ekādaśī** — the 11th *tithi* of each fortnight, a widely kept fasting day — is labelled on the relevant dates so you can spot it at a glance. Upcoming festivals such as **Guru Pūrṇimā** appear as a preview banner. Because festivals are defined by *tithi* and *nakṣatra* rather than by a fixed Gregorian date, their calendar position shifts from year to year — the app resolves the conversion for you automatically.
## The leap month (Adhika māsa)
The Hindu calendar is **luni-solar**: it must keep lunar months aligned with the solar year even though the two cycles do not divide evenly. Roughly every three years, an extra intercalary month — the **Adhika māsa** ("added month"), sometimes called the "leap month" — is inserted. When the year you are browsing contains one, the app shows a notice:
> 2026 has an Adhika (leap) month
This is why a festival can occasionally appear to "jump" by a whole month between consecutive years. A reliable Panchāng must detect the leap month rather than assume twelve lunar months per solar year, and the app handles this automatically across all its date arithmetic.
## How to use it
Browse to your candidate date, check the five limbs and their transition times, and note the *muhūrta* windows. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see [Choosing an auspicious date](/examples/choose-a-date).
Use the month view's Ekādaśī markers and festival previews to plan ahead. Because dates are *tithi*-based, checking the Panchāng is more reliable than a fixed-date reminder.
The combination of tithi, nakṣatra, yoga, and karaṇa gives each day its general quality. Reading these before layering in chart-specific transits or *daśā* periods helps you understand the background tone of any given day.