Muhūrta finder मुहूर्त

What the texts say about choosing a day

Muhūrta is the oldest practical branch of Jyotiṣa: not what will happen to you, but when a thing is well begun. The guidance below is general — it applies to everyone, needs no birth details, and is printed with the classical text behind each line. The personalised finder, which weighs the same days against your own janma nakṣatra, is further down this page.

The five things a muhūrta is made of

A traditional election reads the day through the five limbs of the pañcāṅga, and then the hour through the rising sign. Each limb answers a different question, which is why a date can be excellent on one and impossible on another.

• TithiThe lunar day. The classical chapters sort the fifteen tithis into five families and reject one family outright for auspicious beginnings.
• VāraThe weekday, reckoned from sunrise rather than midnight — so a pre-dawn hour still belongs to the previous vāra.
• NakṣatraWhich of the twenty-seven lunar mansions the Moon stands in. This is the limb the texts spend the most words on, because it is the one that decides which kind of act the day suits.
• Yoga and karaṇaThe nitya-yoga and the half-tithi. Consulted chiefly to reject: a few named yogas and the Bhadrā karaṇa are set aside rather than sought.
• LagnaThe sign rising at the chosen minute. The day gets you a date; only the lagna gets you an hour, and the texts judge it by whether the sign is fixed, movable or dual.

The nakṣatra groups, and the acts each one carries

The single most-used table in muhūrta is Varāhamihira’s: the twenty-seven nakṣatras sorted by character, with the acts each character suits named outright. It is reproduced below in the translator’s own words, so you can weigh it yourself rather than take a summary on trust.

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

Two things this table does not settle

• Hasta appears twice.The chapter puts Hasta among the light asterisms in v. 9 and again among the moving ones in v. 11. Horā prints it in both places rather than deleting one, because the text has it in both.
• Punarvasu is left out.Twenty-six of the twenty-seven nakṣatras receive a group in this chapter; Punarvasu receives none. Horā does not assign it one. It is named in the shaving list further down, and nowhere else here.
• Chapter numbering varies.Editions of the Bṛhat Saṁhitā number this chapter 97 or 98 and shift verse numbers by one or two. The chapter is therefore cited by its name as well as its number.

The five families of tithi

The same author sorts the fifteen lunar days of a fortnight into five families of three. Four of them are ordinary; one is set aside. This is the rule Horā’s own day-scoring applies, and it is why a day that looks fine on every other count can still come back marked.

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.

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

The undertakings people actually plan around

Twelve saṁskāras and undertakings, each with what the classical texts favour, what they set aside, and where in life or in the year they place it. Every line carries its source. Where a rule could not be tied to a text Horā can quote, it is not here — it is named further down instead.

Where regional practice differs — and it very often does

Muhūrta is where Indian calendars disagree most visibly. Two pañcāṅgas can both be right and still name different days, because they are counting differently. Horā names the difference instead of quietly choosing for you.

• Amānta and pūrṇimānta monthsWestern and southern India end the lunar month at the new moon; much of the north ends it at the full moon. The tithi is the same in both; the month it is called by is not. A date quoted as “Śrāvaṇa kṛṣṇa aṣṭamī” therefore needs the reckoning named beside it, or it can be a full month out.
• Lunar and solar calendarsTamil Nadu, Kerala, Bengal, Assam, Odisha and Punjab reckon the year by solar months running from one saṅkrānti to the next; most of the rest of India reckons it by lunar months. “A muhūrta in Vaiśākha” is not the same window in the two systems.
• Which day a tithi belongs toThe traditional day runs sunrise to sunrise, and a tithi or nakṣatra is credited to the day on which it is current at sunrise. Pañcāṅgas that instead print only the clock moment of change will disagree with each other about which calendar date a rite falls on.
• The year for a tonsureManu gives the first year or the third; Śaṅkha, cited in the Smṛti-tattva, holds the third to be what the Gṛhyasūtras accepted; the Vīramitrodaya reads the “or” as admitting the second. All three readings are in the tradition, and families follow the one their school follows.
• The age for upanayanaManu gives the eighth, eleventh and twelfth year by varṇa. The Gṛhyasūtra schools differ among themselves, and a family follows its own śākhā rather than a single national rule.
• Even one chapter can be read two waysThe Bṛhat Saṁhitā’s own list puts Hasta in two groups and leaves Punarvasu in none. Two competent astrologers reading the same chapter can therefore reach different lists — which is a reason to ask your family’s purohita, not a reason to distrust either of them.

Rules you will be told, that Horā does not print

These are followed widely and seriously across India, and most of them are not folk accretions — they have classical homes. What Horā lacks is the DIGITISED TEXT, not the authority: the works they live in are named beside each rule below and are not yet part of this platform’s corpus, so Horā will not compute them or print them as though it had read them. They are named here rather than hidden, because a reader who is told one of them deserves to know exactly where Horā stands — and the honest answer is “that rule is older and better founded than our library”.

None of this says these rules are wrong, and for most of them the source is not in doubt — the text is simply not in our library yet. Horā will not print, or compute, as though it had read a book it has not read. Your family’s purohita follows a paddhati — a school’s own manual — and that is a living authority this page does not attempt to replace.

The personalised finder

Everything above is true for everyone alive today, which is both its strength and its limit. Half of what the classical procedure asks is the relation between the day’s Moon and your own birth star — and that cannot be printed in an almanac. The finder inside the chart tool scores the same days against your own chart and then elects the hour.

• Tārā balaThe day’s nakṣatra counted from your janma nakṣatra in a cycle of nine — Janma, Sampat, Vipat, Kṣema, Pratyari, Sādhaka, Vadha, Mitra, Ati-mitra. Three of the nine are adverse for a start, and which three you get depends entirely on your birth star.
• Candra balaWhere the day’s Moon stands from your janma rāśi. The 4th, 8th and 12th are set aside; the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 10th and 11th are taken as supportive.
• The day’s obstacles, for your placeRāhu-kāla, gulika and yamaghaṇṭa computed from the real daylight span at your coordinates — not read from a fixed table, so they move with your longitude and the season.
• An exact hourA five-minute scan of the chosen day for a clean rising sign: the modality the act wants, a dignified lagna lord, benefics in the kendras, and the 8th sign from your janma rāśi avoided.
• What it will not doIt will not tell you a date is safe. It shows what each criterion found and leaves the judgement where the texts leave it — with you and the people advising you.

Open the muhūrta finder

The finder lives inside the chart tool, because it needs a chart. Free, and no account is needed.