Lesson 7 of 14
Good and bad hours: Rahu kaal, Gowri and Nalla neram
The daylight is cut into equal parts, and each weekday gives certain parts to certain names.
Today’s daylight, cut into the eight equal parts that fix Rahu kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika kaal, is worked out on this device for the place the panchangam page was last set to, and appears as this page opens.
Beyond the five limbs, an almanac prints the hours of the day to use and to avoid. None of them is a fixed clock time. Each is a fraction of the actual daylight at your place, from to , so they stretch in summer, shrink in winter and move from town to town.
Rahu kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika
Cut the daylight into eight equal parts, each about ninety minutes on an equinox day. takes one of those parts, a different one each weekday: the eighth on Sunday, the second on Monday, the seventh on Tuesday, the fifth on Wednesday, the sixth on Thursday, the fourth on Friday and the third on Saturday. With a 06:00 sunrise that puts Rahu kaal at 07:30 to 09:00 on a Monday and 16:30 to 18:00 on a Sunday. Families avoid starting anything in it: a journey, a purchase, a signature, a first visit.
and are two more eighths chosen the same way, and both are avoided for beginnings too. Gulika is the part of Sani’s son, and its rule is the simplest: the seventh part on Sunday, one part earlier each day, the first part on Saturday. The three never overlap on the same day.
Gowri panchangam
The Tamil cuts the day into eight parts as well, and the night into eight more, and gives every part one of eight names in a repeating cycle: , , , , , , and . Amirdha, Dhanam, Laabam, Sugam and Uthi are good; Rogam (illness), Soram (theft) and Visham (poison) are avoided. Each weekday starts the cycle at a different name, which is why the table changes day by day.
Nalla neram
, "good time", is the window the almanac prints for a family in a hurry: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. On this site it is the first good Gowri part of each half of the day that does not touch Rahu kaal, Yamaganda or Gulika, capped at ninety minutes. Almanacs differ a little in how they pick it, so a printed one may not agree to the minute.
Abhijit and the other windows
is the auspicious around noon, the eighth of the fifteen equal parts of the daylight, straddling the moment the Sun crosses the meridian. It is the standing fallback for a beginning when nothing better is free. The gives each of the twenty-four hours from sunrise to a graha, the first to the weekday’s lord; Chandran, Budhan, Guru and Sukran hours are good. Telugu and Kannada almanacs add and to avoid and to use.
North India reads the same idea as the : eight parts of the day and eight of the night named , , and for good, , and to avoid.
These hours are a first filter for everyday things. A wedding or a house-warming wants a proper , which weighs the whole day and not just an hour.