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What is Panchang?
In short
What is Panchang?
Panchang means 'five limbs'. It is the Hindu almanac for a day, giving the tithi, the vara (weekday), the nakshatra, the yoga and the karana. Alongside those it lists sunrise, sunset and the auspicious and inauspicious time windows, all of which depend on your location.
The five limbs
Tithi is a lunar day: the time it takes the Moon to gain 12 degrees on the Sun. There are 30 in a lunar month, fifteen in each paksha. Nakshatra is the Moon's mansion. Yoga is a division of the sum of the Sun's and Moon's longitudes into 27 parts, and karana is half a tithi, of which there are 60 in a month with eleven names.
Vara is simply the weekday, but it matters more than it looks: several muhurta windows, including Rahu Kaal and the Choghadiya sequence, are determined by which day of the week it is.
Why panchang is location-specific
Everything anchored to sunrise changes with where you are. Rahu Kaal is the eighth division of the daylight period, so it starts and ends at different clock times in Kathmandu than in Delhi, and different times in December than in June.
The five limbs themselves are read at sunrise, which is the traditional start of the day — not at midnight. This is why a panchang for the same calendar date can name a different tithi in two cities.