Karana Calculator

What Is a Karana?

A karana is defined the same way a tithi is — by the angular gap between the Moon and Sun — except a karana covers half that distance, about 6° instead of a tithi's 12°. That means every tithi contains exactly two karanas, a first half and a second half, and a full lunar month of 30 tithis contains 60 karana occurrences drawn from a repeating set of 11 names.

Karana is one of the five panchang limbs used in traditional Vedic timekeeping, alongside vara (weekday), tithi, nakshatra and yoga. Because it moves twice as fast as a tithi, a single calendar day commonly spans two or more different karanas.

Movable vs. Fixed Karanas

The 11 karana names split into two groups with very different rhythms. The 7 movable (cara) karanas — Bava, Balava, Kaulava, Taitila, Gara, Vanija and Vishti — repeat in a fixed cycle roughly eight times across a lunar month's 60 karana slots, so each name recurs many times. The 4 fixed (sthira) karanas — Shakuni, Chatushpada, Naga and Kimstughna — occur only once each, always in the same position at the very end of Krishna Paksha's last tithi and start of the new lunar month.

Vishti (Bhadra) Karana — Why It's Treated Differently

Vishti, more commonly known by its other name Bhadra, is the seventh of the movable karanas and stands apart from the rest of that group in classical tradition. Where the other six movable karanas are generally treated as suitable for ordinary, routine activity, Vishti/Bhadra is extensively documented — in classical texts and in everyday practice across India — as a period to avoid for weddings, journeys, and other significant new undertakings.

This is one of the most consistently cited pieces of panchang guidance: checking whether Vishti is active during a proposed date and time is a standard, near-universal first step in practical muhurta calculation, well beyond the more general five-fold tithi or nine-fold yoga classifications.

Karana in Panchang and Muhurta

In muhurta practice, the karana active at a proposed moment is checked alongside the tithi, vara, nakshatra and yoga to judge whether a window suits an important activity. Because a karana changes roughly twice as often as a tithi, it offers a finer-grained check within a day that already looks favorable on the other four limbs.

Kimstughna, the last of the four fixed karanas, is similarly well documented as generally inauspicious and is traditionally treated with the same caution as Vishti for major new undertakings. Knowing your own birth karana completes your panchang profile alongside your tithi and nitya yoga, though like those two it plays a smaller role in personal reading than your Lagna, Rashi or Nakshatra.