Lesson 6 of 14
The panchangam’s five limbs, and how a Tamil day is read
Tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana: five facts about the day, all read at sunrise.
Tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana for today — with the hour each one gives way to the next — are worked out on this device for the place the panchangam page was last set to, and appear as this page opens.
The is the almanac, and its name means five limbs. Every day is described by five facts, each read at local , and each running until a clock time the almanac prints beside it. A Tamil day begins at sunrise, not at midnight, so a limb that changes at 02:00 belongs to the day that began the previous morning.
1. Tithi, the lunar day
A is each 12 degrees the Moon gains on the Sun. Thirty fill a lunar month. The first fifteen, from new moon to full, are the bright fortnight, or valarpirai; the next fifteen are the dark fortnight, or theipirai. The fifteenth of the bright half is , the full moon, and the last of the dark half is , the new moon. , the eleventh, is the fasting day. A tithi can be shorter or longer than a day, so now and then one begins and ends between two sunrises and is never named at dawn.
2. Vara, the weekday
The is the weekday, counted from sunrise. Each is ruled by a graha: Sunday by the Sun, Monday the Moon, Tuesday , Wednesday , Thursday , Friday , Saturday . That is why Tuesday is Sevvai-kizhamai in Tamil.
3. Nakshatra, the Moon’s star
The of the day is the star the Moon is in, the same twenty-seven as the birth stars. When a festival is fixed by a star, like Deepam or Thiruvonam, it falls on the day that star holds at sunrise.
4. Yoga, the joint position
The panchangam’s adds the Sun’s and Moon’s positions together and cuts the total into twenty-seven parts, from to . Most are good; a few, like and Vaidhriti, are avoided for beginnings. It has nothing to do with the yogas in a horoscope, which share the word.
5. Karana, half a tithi
A is half a tithi. Seven movable names cycle through the month and four fixed ones sit at the new moon. The one to know is , also called Bhadra: a wedding day loses points when it is running at sunrise.
Reading the day
A Tamil almanac heads each day with the Tamil date first: the month, named by the Sun’s , and the day of that month, then the from the sixty-year cycle. Then come the five limbs with their ending times, then the day’s good and bad hours, which the next lesson covers. A typical line reads: the weekday, "Shukla Trayodasi until 14:20, then Chaturdasi", "Sadayam until 09:05, then Poorattathi", the yoga, the karana. The words "until" and "then" matter: most days hold two tithis and two stars, and the one running at the moment of an event is the one that counts for it.
The times depend on where you are. Sunrise in Chennai is several minutes earlier than in Coimbatore, so the limbs are read at a different moment, and a star ending near dawn can be the day’s star in one town and not in the other. The panchangam page computes everything for the place you enter for that reason.