About Vedangam

Our mission

Vedangam exists to make the traditional knowledge systems of India accessible, accurate and freely available. The name means "the limbs of the Veda": the six Vedangas — Shiksha (phonetics), Kalpa (ritual), Vyakarana (grammar), Nirukta (etymology), Chandas (metre) and Jyotisha (astronomy and time-keeping) — are the auxiliary disciplines that were developed to preserve, understand and correctly apply the Vedic texts. We focus most deeply on Jyotisha, because the Panchangam it produces is still consulted every day by millions of families for festivals, fasts, ceremonies and auspicious timings.

We believe this heritage should be presented clearly, with its astronomical basis explained, in the languages people actually read. Everything on the site is free to use and requires no account or registration.

What Vedangam offers

• Daily Panchangam — the five limbs of the day (Tithi, Vara, Nakshatra, Yoga and Karana) together with sunrise, sunset, moonrise, Rahu Kalam, Yamagandam, Gulika Kalam, Abhijit Muhurta and other daily timings, computed astronomically for every date. See today's Panchangam.
• Festival dates — major Hindu festivals and vratas (Ugadi, Rama Navami, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navaratri, Deepavali, Maha Shivaratri, Ekadashis and more) derived from the same calculations. Browse festivals.
• City timings — local sunrise-based Panchangam and Rahu Kalam for 25 Indian cities, because sunrise, and therefore many daily timings, changes with latitude and longitude. Choose a city.
• Ten languages — English, Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali and Punjabi, so that names of tithis, nakshatras and months appear the way readers know them.
• Vedanga knowledge — reference articles on the 27 Nakshatras, the nine Navagrahas, Vedic units of time, Indian calendar systems, the astronomers and mathematicians of the Jyotisha tradition, and each of the six Vedangas: Shiksha, Kalpa, Vyakarana, Nirukta, Chandas and Jyotisha.

Methodology: how the Panchangam is computed

A Panchangam is fundamentally an astronomical document. Each of its five elements is defined by the positions of the Sun and the Moon, so the quality of a Panchangam depends on the quality of those positions and on the conventions used to turn them into calendar entries. We document our choices here so that readers can compare our tables with other almanacs on an informed basis.

Planetary positions

The longitudes of the Sun, Moon and planets are computed with a modern astronomical ephemeris rather than with the mean-motion tables of the classical Siddhantas. Traditional texts such as the Surya Siddhanta remain important historically, and many printed almanacs still follow them (these are often called vakya or Siddhantic panchangas), but modern positional astronomy predicts eclipses, conjunctions and the timing of tithis more precisely. Panchangas that use modern positions are often called drik (observational) panchangas, and ours belongs to that family.

Sidereal zodiac and ayanamsa

Indian astronomy measures longitudes in the sidereal zodiac, which is fixed relative to the stars, whereas modern astronomy usually reports tropical longitudes measured from the moving vernal equinox. The difference between the two, the ayanamsa, grows by roughly 50 arc-seconds a year because of the precession of the equinoxes. We use the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsa, which places the star Chitra (Spica) at 180 degrees of sidereal longitude. It was recommended by the Calendar Reform Committee of the Government of India and is the most widely used ayanamsa in Indian almanacs today. Nakshatra, Yoga, solar month (sankranti) and rashi calculations all depend on this choice.

Sunrise-based day

In the Hindu calendar the civil day runs from one sunrise to the next. Following the standard convention, the tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana listed for a date are the ones prevailing at sunrise, and their ending times are shown so that you can see when the next one begins. A tithi that begins and ends between two sunrises never prevails at sunrise and is therefore a kshaya (skipped) tithi; a tithi spanning two sunrises appears on two consecutive days as an adhika (repeated) tithi.

Months and eras

Lunar months are named in the Amanta system, in which a month ends with the new moon (Amavasya), as followed in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and much of South India. Readers in North India who follow the Purnimanta system will find that the dark fortnight carries the name of the following month in their local almanac; the tithis and festival days themselves are the same. Intercalary (adhika) months are applied according to the standard rule that a lunar month containing no solar sankranti is an adhika masa. Learn more on our calendar systems page.

Reference location

The general (all-India) Panchangam is computed for Ujjain, the historic prime meridian of Indian astronomy, using Indian Standard Time. The city pages recompute every sunrise-dependent value for the local sunrise and sunset of that city, so the tithi at sunrise, Rahu Kalam and similar timings can differ from the Ujjain figures, sometimes by a whole day near a tithi boundary.

Accuracy and differences from printed almanacs

Different almanacs legitimately disagree. A Panchangam from your temple or family tradition may use a different ayanamsa, a Siddhantic rather than modern ephemeris, Purnimanta month names, a different reference city, or regional rules for observing festivals (for example, whether a festival is kept on the day its tithi prevails at sunrise, at midday or at midnight). For these reasons timings shown on Vedangam can differ by a few minutes — and occasionally festival dates by a day — from your local printed Panchangam. For religious observances that matter to you, please follow your own tradition, temple or family priest. If you believe we have made an actual error, we would be grateful to hear from you.

Editorial approach

Vedangam is an educational and cultural resource, not a commercial astrology service. We do not sell readings, remedies or gemstones. Where we describe astrological beliefs, we present them as part of a living religious and cultural tradition and say so clearly. Historical claims are kept to what is supported by the texts and by mainstream scholarship, and where dates or attributions are uncertain we say that too.

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Contact

Questions, corrections and suggestions are welcome. Please use our contact page. When reporting a possible error in the Panchangam, include the date, the city or page, and the value you expected.