10 July 2026

How to Read a Panchang: Tithi, Nakshatra, and the Five Limbs Explained

A Panchang looks intimidating at first: five Sanskrit terms and a grid of numbers. Here's what Tithi, Vara, Nakshatra, Yoga, and Karana actually mean, in plain English.

Open a printed Panchang for the first time and it's easy to feel lost: rows of Sanskrit terms, numbers that change daily, and no obvious starting point. But the whole system boils down to five measurements taken together, and once you know what each one is tracking, the rest starts to make sense.

The Five Limbs at a Glance

Panchang literally means 'five limbs,' and that's exactly the structure: five separate calculations combined into one daily reading. Tithi is the lunar day, based on the angle between the Sun and Moon, with 30 in a lunar month. Vara is simply the day of the week, each linked to a presiding planet. Nakshatra is the lunar mansion, one of 27 star-based segments the Moon passes through as it circles the zodiac. Yoga is a combined solar-lunar angle used to judge the general character of a period. And Karana is exactly half of a Tithi, used for finer time-keeping within a single lunar day.

Why Tithi Matters Most for Festival Dates

Of the five, Tithi is the one that actually decides when most Hindu festivals fall. Ekadashi is the 11th Tithi of each fortnight and comes around twice a month, observed with fasting. Purnima, the full moon Tithi, and Amavasya, the new moon Tithi, bookend each lunar month and anchor major festivals. Diwali, for instance, is always the Amavasya of the Kartik month, which is why its Gregorian date can land anywhere from mid-October to mid-November depending on the year.

Panchang Varies by Region and Source

Here's the part that trips people up: not every Panchang agrees on the exact moment a Tithi begins and ends, because a Tithi doesn't always align cleanly with sunrise-to-sunrise days. Occasionally a Tithi gets skipped entirely, or stretches across two sunrises. That's why Bengali Panjika and North Indian Drik Panchang sometimes list a festival's Shashthi or Ashtami a day apart; neither is wrong, they're just using slightly different rules for resolving the same astronomical moment. It's worth checking your local Panchang or family tradition rather than assuming every calendar will agree down to the day.

Where to Find This on Our Site

Every year's Panchang page on this site breaks down the same five limbs month by month, and the Tithi page focuses specifically on Ekadashi, Purnima, and Amavasya dates. Both are computed from real Sun/Moon astronomical positions rather than a static lookup table — see the methodology note on the Panchang page for exactly how.