Frequently Asked Questions

Start from the occasion. The timing page lists the ceremonies we hold muhurtham rules for; pick yours, give it the place it will actually be held — a city, or coordinates — and it reads each day of the next fortnight against tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana, and returns the windows those rules allow. Signed out you see the three best; an account adds every window in the range, why each one qualified, and the Chogadiya around them. An occasion we hold no rules for returns nothing — that means no rule here, not that there is no good day for it.

Usually because a different rule was applied, not because one of the two is wrong. The shastra rule for each festival names which qualifying instant decides the date — sunrise, the afternoon, dusk, the pre-night hour or midnight — and one sampradayam (a household's own line of practice) may not keep the same rule as another. A traditional day also runs sunrise to sunrise for the place you are standing in, so the same festival can legitimately fall on different Gregorian dates in Chennai and in London. Where we place a festival we show the rule we applied. If your family keeps a different rule, keep it.

It is a careful reference, not a ruling. Every procedure on this site is a draft: written in-house from published sources, and none has yet been read by a practising purohit. Where your family or your sampradayam keeps a different order, an extra step or a different mantra, follow theirs. We say this on the puja pages themselves, not only here.

The samagri shelf is open — grains, powders, oils, cloth, vessels and ready-made kits, priced and orderable as a guest, no account needed. A puja page lists what that one needs, split into what a kit covers and what a household usually keeps at home, so you order only the difference. Booking a purohit is owned work and does not carry a date.

The vidhi as ordered steps — each a draft, as above — with the mantra where the tradition gives one, and the samagri list beside it. Where we hold muhurtham rules for that ceremony, there is a link straight to the timing search. Your browser's own speech synthesis can read a mantra aloud from the page: not a recording, not a chanting track, and it reads the mantra rather than the instructions.

The Hindu calendar, read as five limbs — pancha (five) anga (limbs): tithi, the lunar day; vaaram, the weekday; nakshatra, the lunar mansion; yoga, the luni-solar day; and karana, half a lunar day. Together they say what a day suits and when it is auspicious to begin something.

Not to read. The daily panchangam, the timing search, gruhapravesham timing, the festival directory, the sankalpam generator, the eclipse, birth-chart and matching previews, the puja corpus, the vaasthu and IKS reference tables and the devotional hymns all open to a signed-out visitor. An account carries the same screens further rather than unlocking different ones: on the panchangam it fills the tabs a preview leaves marked — Rahu Kalam and the other inauspicious windows, Chogadiya and Hora, the puja muhurthams and the calendar export; on a chart, the divisional charts, the dasha periods, Ashtakavarga and the six-fold strength; and it keeps what you compute. The deeper calculators — the muhurtham tools, the vratam timings, the jyotisha (astrology) tools and the planetary suite, plus the seasons page and the Ayadi proportions calculator — each need one to run, and each says so on its own page before you fill anything in.

Give the page a place — a city, or coordinates — and it computes the five limbs for that place, the instant each one ends, and the day's sunrise and sunset. Nothing is looked up in a table, which is why the same date reads differently in two cities. One screen either way: signed out the first tab fills and the rest are marked with what an account adds, rather than hidden.

Because the panchangam is computed against your own sunrise and sunset, and those move with latitude and longitude — so does the timing of every celestial event it reads. Without a place there is no answer for you, only an average for somebody else.

Jyotisha uses the sidereal zodiac, fixed against the star constellations; Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac, fixed against the seasons. The two frames currently differ by about 24 degrees. Jyotisha also brings in nakshatras, dashas and its own house systems. Pūjāvāni computes in the sidereal frame throughout, with the Lahiri ayanamsha.

Pick the occasion and the place. The engine walks the range in fifteen-minute steps, scoring each against the rules it holds for that ceremony — the favourable tithis, the nakshatras the act suits, the yoga, and the windows to avoid. Signed out you see the three best; an account adds the rest and why each one qualified. It narrows the field; it does not decide. For a marriage, or anything else with real consequences, take the shortlist to a purohit who knows your family's practice.

Pratipada (1st) for new beginnings, Dwitiya (2nd) and Tritiya (3rd) for growth, Panchami (5th) for learning, Saptami (7th) for travel, Dashami (10th) for governance, Ekadashi (11th) for spiritual practice, and Purnima (full moon) for celebrations. Avoid Chaturthi, Navami, Chaturdashi and Amavasya for anything new. The associations come from long-recorded observation of natural and human cycles against the lunar phases — Amavasya, for instance, is kept for the ancestors rather than for new work.

Ashwini, Pushya and Hasta for medical treatment. Rohini, Uttaraphalguni and Uttarashadha for marriage. Chitra and Vishakha for business. Shravana and Revati for study. Each of the twenty-seven carries qualities that suit it to particular work.

Abhijit muhurtham, around local noon, is held auspicious for almost anything. Beyond it: Amrita Kalam for spiritual practice, Vishti Karana to avoid for a new beginning, and the ruling planet's hora. For something that matters, pick a day whose tithi and nakshatra agree as well.

Read the tithi for the day's overall quality, note the weekday's ruler, pick a muhurtham for anything that matters, keep Rahu Kalam clear of new starts, use Abhijit around noon, and check whether the running nakshatra suits the work. That is the whole habit.

A ninety-minute stretch each day held inauspicious for starting something new — a meeting that matters, an investment, the start of a journey, a ceremony. Routine and already-running work carry on through it. It moves daily with the sunrise and the weekday.

It is read at two grains. Your birth nakshatra is treated as a standing quality of temperament and life path; the running nakshatra of the day says what the day suits — which is why it guides muhurtham, matching, travel directions and the timing of business decisions. Each of the twenty-seven carries its own deity, qualities and traditional purposes.

No. Pūjāvāni sends no reminders and no notifications, and there is no feed to subscribe to. Every reading here is pulled — you open the page and it computes. If a vratam matters to you, the calendar and the vratam pages give you the day, but nothing here will come and find you on it.

Most festivals are placed on the lunar calendar, by tithi rather than by date. Diwali falls on the Amavasya of Kartika, Holi on the Purnima of Phalguna, Navaratri on a named tithi. The Gregorian date moves every year; the tithi does not.

The lunar year is about eleven days shorter than the solar one, so a fixed tithi lands on a different Gregorian date each year. Regional practice and the choice of calendar — solar, lunar or luni-solar — can move it further.

The eleventh lunar day, twice a month, and held especially auspicious for spiritual practice. It is kept with a fast, prayer and meditation. Each Ekadashi has its own name and its own fruit, Nirjala and Vaikuntha Ekadashi most of all.

Positions come from the Swiss Ephemeris rather than from a printed table, and the five limbs follow the Drik Siddhanta (observational) method: a transition instant is found by root-finding on the real longitude difference, not by interpolating a daily table. What has not been done is a city-by-city comparison against a published almanac; the verification chapter under Reference says so plainly rather than printing a parity figure nobody measured.

The standard astronomical library, from Astrodienst AG. It derives planetary positions from the JPL ephemerides and covers every body a panchangam needs, traditional and modern. Pūjāvāni computes each figure through it rather than reading one off a stored table.

Drik Siddhanta — every event computed from the real observable positions for your place. It is what a contemporary Drik almanac uses, and it differs from the older mean-motion (Vakya) tables, which can drift measurably in the Moon's position.

A planet appearing to move backwards through the zodiac as seen from Earth — an effect of the two orbits' relative speeds, not of the planet turning round. Jyotisha reads a retrograde planet as stronger and more inward: Mercury on communication, Venus on relationships, Mars on drive. It matters mainly for timing.

An eclipse needs the Sun, Moon and Earth in line, so a solar eclipse falls on Amavasya and a lunar one on Purnima. Pūjāvāni finds them from the same ephemeris that computes the rest of the panchangam. Tradition treats an eclipse as significant and keeps its own practices around it.

It is the angular gap between the tropical and sidereal zodiacs — currently about 24 degrees — and it exists because the equinoxes precess through a full circle roughly every 26,000 years. Lahiri, Raman and Krishnamurti place that gap slightly differently, so each shifts every derived figure a little. Pūjāvāni uses Lahiri, the value the Government of India adopted for the Rashtriya Panchang.

Brahma muhurtham, the ninety minutes before sunrise. After it: the two sandhyas at sunrise and sunset, Abhijit around noon, and Pradosha in the ninety minutes before sunset. A full-moon night suits sitting together; Ekadashi suits sitting alone.

Ekadashi, the eleventh lunar day, twice a month, is the chief one. Purnima and Amavasya are the other two. Weekdays carry their own: Monday for Shiva, Tuesday for Hanuman, Thursday for Guru, Saturday for Shani.

Tradition treats an eclipse as a potent time, and chanting during it as especially so. The usual practices are a fast, not cooking through it, a bath afterwards and giving in charity. Many keep the hours for sustained meditation and prayer.

It is traditionally consulted for exactly that. Open on a growth tithi (2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13), sign during a stable nakshatra, keep the Rikta tithis clear of an investment, and negotiate in Abhijit. Plenty of Indian businesses still work this way.

It grew out of farming. Lunar phase affects plant growth and water content, particular nakshatras suit the sowing of particular crops, and tithis guide the harvest. Traditional farmers still work to it, and biodynamic farming arrived at much the same by observation.

It is still used to time decisions, to read the rhythms a year is built on, to plan an occasion, and to keep a thread to the tradition it comes from. Whether the timing helps is yours to judge. What this site can show you is how each figure was computed and under which rule, so you can check it against your own.