Composing…
Composing…
Every value you see on PujaKit cites a source. Here are those sources.
Kālaḥ kalayatām aham — “Among calculators of time, I am time.”
Bhagavad Gītā 10.30
The panchang is one of humanity's oldest computational systems — a luni-solar calendar that has guided agricultural, ritual, and civil life across the Indian subcontinent for more than three thousand years. Its values — tithi, nakshatra, yoga, muhurat — are astronomical facts derived from the positions of the Sun and Moon. They are not opinions or estimates. They should be cited like any other scientific source.
This page documents the specific algorithm, ayanamsa, and almanac convention behind every value displayed on PujaKit. Superscript footnotes on panchang pages link directly to the relevant section here.
The five limbs of the panchang — tithi (lunar day), nakshatra (asterism), yoga (luni-solar combination), karana (half-tithi), and vara (weekday) — are calculated using the Drik Panchang algorithm with the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsa.
Ayanamsa is the angular offset between the tropical (sayana) and sidereal (nirayana) zodiac due to the precession of the equinoxes. Lahiri ayanamsa is the standard adopted by the Government of India Calendar Reform Committee (1957) and is used in all official government publications of the Hindu calendar.
All astronomical positions (Sun, Moon, planetary longitudes) are calculated from Swiss Ephemeris, a high-precision ephemeris with sub-arcsecond accuracy for the period 1800–2400 CE. Our calculations are recomputed daily at 00:00 UTC and cached for the full day.
For Indian cities, sunrise and sunset times are sourced from IMD (India Meteorological Department) standard reference tables, adjusted for the geographic coordinates of each city and the current date.
For international locations (used in NRI muhurat calculations), we use USNO (US Naval Observatory) algorithm 2 — the standard method used in astronomical almanacs worldwide. This accounts for atmospheric refraction at the horizon (~0.5° correction).
Sandhya timings (Pratah, Madhyahna, Sayam) are derived from sunrise and sunset using the traditional rule: Pratah sandhya ends 96 minutes after sunrise, Sayam sandhya begins 96 minutes before sunset.
Choghadiya muhurat is calculated from the Drik Panchang convention: the day (sunrise to sunset) and night (sunset to sunrise) are each divided into 8 equal parts of approximately 90 minutes. Each part is assigned one of seven muhurat names in a fixed rotating sequence that begins on Sunday morning with Udveg.
Abhijit muhurat — the most auspicious daily window — falls at local apparent solar noon ±24 minutes. It is considered universal and does not depend on day-of-week conventions. Abhijit is not available on Wednesday (Budi-vaar) per traditional scripture.
For specific event muhurats (marriage, griha pravesh, mundan, etc.), we use a composite scoring of tithi, nakshatra, vara, lagna, and active special yoga combinations, following the convention in the Muhurta Chintamani (16th c.) as adapted in modern almanac practice.
Hindu festival and vrat dates are region-sensitive: the same festival may fall on different days in different parts of India depending on which school of panchang computation the region follows. PujaKit uses the most widely observed convention for each festival.
For Ekadashi and other lunar-tithi-based vrats, we follow the widely accepted Shuddha (pure tithi) convention: if ekadashi tithi is active at sunrise, that day is ekadashi vrat. For Vaishnava communities following the Smarta-Vaishnava convention, we note where the two diverge.
Regional almanac sources used for cross-validation: Panchang Visheshank (Gita Press, Gorakhpur) for the northern calendar, Karnataka Rajyotsava Panchang for Kannada-region dates, and Maharashtra Shri Panchang for Marathi-region dates. Where these diverge, we show the primary and note the alternative.
Sources