Kṛṣṇa Caturthī under Mūla — a Riktā-family day

What the classical tables make of this day

Tithi

Caturthī belongs to the Riktā family of tithis — the 4th, 9th, 14th of either fortnight.

Riktā means empty. These three are the ones the tradition leaves alone for an auspicious beginning; they are not otherwise unlucky days. Amāvāsyā, the new moon, belongs to the pitṛs and is likewise not used for a start.

Source: Bṛhat Saṁhitā, the tithi-karmaguṇa chapter, v. 2 — tr. N. Chidambaram Iyer, 1884.

Nakṣatra

Mūla is one of the tīkṣṇa (sharp) asterisms.

“Punishment, incantations, raising of goblins, imprisonment of person, acts of torture, of separation or of union.”

Source: Bṛhat Saṁhitā of Varāhamihira, the nakṣatra-karmaguṇa chapter (vv. 6–11) — tr. N. Chidambaram Iyer, 1884.

What the tables name for this day, and what they set aside

These four verdicts are a RANK, not a score. There is no pass mark here and no total: the classical texts rank undertakings against a day, they do not grade the day. “Unnamed” means the tables Horā can quote neither name this day for that undertaking nor bar it — it is not permission and it is not refusal.

The rules that fired, and where each comes from

• Caturthī is a riktā tithi — riktā means empty, and the tradition leaves the 4th, 9th and 14th of either fortnight alone for an auspicious beginning.

  Applied to: Marriage · Entering a new home · First haircut · Naming the child · First solid food · Boring the ears · Beginning to learn · The sacred thread · Opening a business or a shop · Buying a vehicle · Breaking ground · Setting out on a journey

• Mūla is in the tīkṣṇa (sharp) group, which this act's entry sets aside — the chapter gives those asterisms punishment, separation, destruction and the like.

  Applied to: Marriage · Entering a new home · Naming the child · First solid food · Boring the ears · Beginning to learn · The sacred thread · Opening a business or a shop · Buying a vehicle · Breaking ground · Setting out on a journey

• Horā's own activity table counts Budhavāra a favourable weekday for this undertaking — reported, not applied.

  Applied to: Marriage · Entering a new home · Beginning to learn · Opening a business or a shop · Setting out on a journey

• Horā's own activity table names Mūla for this undertaking; the verse quoted here does not. Neither is overruled.

  Applied to: Marriage

• For the naming this bar is conditional, exactly as its entry reads: the riktā tithis are set aside “where the tenth or twelfth falls on one and the family can use the other”. The day itself is fixed by the birth, not chosen — where the family cannot use the other day, the rite proceeds on its own day.

  Applied to: Naming the child

The twelve undertakings, with the verse behind each one printed in full and the conventions where schools differ, are on the muhūrta page. Where a rule above refers to the verses “below”, that is the page it means.

Choosing a day against your own chart

Half of a classical election is the relation between this day’s Moon and YOUR OWN birth star — tārā bala and candra bala — which an almanac cannot print because it does not know your birth. That layer lives in the muhūrta finder, against your own chart.

Where the grahas stand

No graha is retrograde at sunrise. Rāhu and Ketu are reckoned perpetually retrograde and are not counted here.

No graha changed direction or rāśi on this day, among those tracked.

A station is the change of sign of a body’s speed, and an ingress the crossing of a sidereal (Lāhirī) rāśi boundary. Both are read from consecutive 12:00 UTC samples, so the day is computed and no finer time is claimed. Stations are tracked for Maṅgala, Budha, Guru, Śukra and Śani; ingresses for Maṅgala, Guru, Śani and Rāhu.

What this column was computed from

Every line of this column is computed, not written. The five limbs are read at this day’s true sunrise over Ujjain — a Vedic day runs sunrise to sunrise, and a day is named by the limb current at its sunrise. Positions are sidereal (Lāhirī / Citrapakṣa ayanāṁśa) from a high-precision astronomical ephemeris; sunrise and sunset are computed by rise-transit for Ujjain’s exact coordinates, which is why the publishing time of this column moves through the year. The classical character of the tithi and the asterism, and the twelve undertakings, apply only tables this site prints verbatim with their citation. No language model wrote any part of this page, and nothing on it was retrieved from a third party.

Which event leads the column is Horā's disclosed editorial ranking — a station, then an ingress, then a syzygy, an Ekādaśī, a Saṅkrānti, a Pradoṣa, a broadly named muhūrta day (six or more undertakings named), and otherwise the tithi's classical character. Every fact in every candidate is computed; the ranking only chooses which computed fact leads.

Only days that are astronomically computable AND classically named are marked here: Pūrṇimā and Amāvāsyā from the instant of the syzygy itself, Ekādaśī and Pradoṣa from the tithi current at sunrise, and Saṅkrānti from the Sun’s crossing into a new rāśi. No festival calendar is applied. Which festival falls on which tithi is a regional and sampradāya decision — often a particular temple’s reckoning — and it cannot be derived from the astronomy, so this column does not guess at it.

Rāhu-kāla runs 12:24-14:02, yamaghaṇṭa 07:29-09:07, gulika 10:45-12:24. Each is an eighth of this day's actual daylight at Ujjain, not a fixed clock hour.

Abhijit — the eighth of the day's fifteen equal daylight muhūrtas — runs 11:57-12:50.

The five limbs (tithi, vāra, nakṣatra, yoga, karaṇa) are computed AT SUNRISE of each day — the classical convention, since a Vedic day runs sunrise to sunrise and a day is named by the limb current at its sunrise (not at midnight or local noon). Positions are sidereal (Lāhirī / Citrapakṣa ayanāṁśa) from the ephemeris; sunrise and sunset are computed by rise-transit for these exact coordinates, so every timing below shifts correctly with longitude, latitude and season. Rāhu-kāla, Yamaghaṇṭa and Gulika are the classical daylight-eighths tables applied to that day's real daylight span; Abhijit is the 8th of 15 equal daylight muhūrtas. Because a tithi is a 12° elongation and not a day, a tithi may be skipped (kṣaya) or repeated (adhika) from one sunrise to the next — that is expected, not an error. Two consequences worth knowing. When a tithi is SKIPPED it is current at no sunrise at all, so an Ekādaśī or a Pradoṣa can be missing from a month here even though the tithi did occur; which adjoining day the observance then moves to is decided by regional rule (Smārta and Vaiṣṇava reckonings differ), which is why this almanac does not move it for you. When a tithi is REPEATED it is current at two successive sunrises, so both days are marked and each is labelled as the first or second of the pair, rather than one being chosen silently. Pūrṇimā and Amāvāsyā are the exception to all of this: they are NOT taken from the sunrise tithi but from the instant of the syzygy itself (the Moon exactly opposite, or exactly with, the Sun), which is printed alongside them. There is exactly one full moon and one new moon per lunation, so a sunrise rule would print them twice in a repeated month and lose them entirely in a skipped one. Note that the observance day a printed pañcāṅga names may still be the previous day where the tithi prevails through that night — the instant given here is the astronomy, from which any convention can be applied. Marked days are only those that are astronomically computable and classically named: Pūrṇimā, Amāvāsyā, Ekādaśī, Pradoṣa (trayodaśī) and Saṅkrānti (the Sun changing rāśi, shown on the local civil day containing the ingress; regional punya-kāla conventions for observing it differ). No festival calendar is applied: which festival falls on which tithi is a regional and sampradāya-specific decision that cannot be derived from the astronomy, so this almanac does not guess at it.