Modern Panditji

Choghadiya

Aaj ka choghadiya — today’s good and bad hours

Eight windows between sunrise and sunset, eight more through the night. Pick the good one and the errand you were putting off has a time on it.

· Guruvara

Every timing on this page is computed for Delhi. The eight parts are cut out of the real interval between sunrise and sunset, so they move with the city and with the season — pick your own city and the whole table is recomputed for it.

Sunrise05:41 amSunset07:13 pm

Right now

Which choghadiya is running

At sunrise

Shubh

Good

to

A favourable window — fine for a small thing like a journey, a purchase or a call.

This page is refreshed once a day, near sunrise (05:41 am). The window marked here is the one running then — it does not follow your phone’s clock, so read the times below against the hour you are actually in.

Sunrise to sunset

Din ka choghadiya

Daylight, cut into eight equal parts. Each carries a name and a verdict; the one marked below is the window running as this page was last refreshed.

Daytime

Sunrise to sunset, in eight equal parts.

  • toShubhGood· at sunrise
  • toRogAvoid
  • toUdvegAvoid
  • toCharGood
  • toLabhGood
  • toAmritGood
  • toKaalAvoid
  • toShubhGood

Sunset to sunrise

Raat ka choghadiya

The night is divided the same way, from sunset to tomorrow’s sunrise. The names run in a different order — the night opens on the choghadiya that opens the fifth weekday from today — which is why a night window is never the daytime one repeated.

Night

Sunset to tomorrow’s sunrise, in eight equal parts.

  • toAmritGood
  • toCharGood
  • toRogAvoid
  • toKaalAvoid
  • toLabhGood
  • toUdvegAvoid
  • toShubhGood
  • toAmritGood

What it is

What a choghadiya is

Choghadiyameans “four ghadi” — an old unit of about ninety-six minutes. Take the time between sunrise and sunset, divide it into eight equal parts, and each part is one choghadiya. Do the same between sunset and the next sunrise and you have the eight night windows. That is the whole of it: there is no hidden table, only a division of the actual daylight where you are standing.

Because the parts are fractions rather than fixed clock hours, they breathe with the year. A choghadiya in a Delhi June runs close to an hour and forty minutes; the same window in December is nearer eighty-five. A page that tells you a choghadiya is “always ninety-six minutes” is quoting the average and has not looked at your sunrise.

How the eight are named

Where the order comes from

Seven names cycle through the eight slots, so the eighth always repeats the first. Which name lands first is decided by the weekday: the day opens on the choghadiya ruled by that weekday’s own planet. Sunday opens on Udveg (the Sun), Monday on Amrit (the Moon), Tuesday on Rog (Mars), Wednesday on Labh (Mercury), Thursday on Shubh (Jupiter), Friday on Char (Venus), Saturday on Kaal (Saturn).

After that the sequence steps forward through the planetary hour order — Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars — the same Chaldean run that gave nearly every language its weekday names. It is why the choghadiya table and the hora table agree with each other, and why the whole thing can be derived rather than looked up.

Good for what

The seven names, and their use

Four of the seven are counted favourable and three are not. What follows is what the tradition uses each one for — not a promise about your day, and not a warning about it either.

  • Amrit

    Good

    The best of the eight. Anything you want to last — a purchase, a new job, a first meeting.

  • Shubh

    Good

    Ceremony and commitment: a puja, an engagement, signing something you mean to keep.

  • Labh

    Good

    Money and study — starting a business, a deal, an exam, anything meant to earn.

  • Char

    Good

    Movement. Good for travel and errands, less so for anything meant to stay put.

  • Udveg

    Avoid

    Restless. Routine work carries on fine; a new beginning usually waits for the next window.

  • Rog

    Avoid

    Traditionally set aside for health matters and disputes rather than for starting things.

  • Kaal

    Avoid

    The one most people wait out. Custom keeps new work back; work already running continues.

One honest caveat about Char: it is counted good here and on most printed panchangs, but its meaning is “moveable”. It suits a journey better than it suits a signature.

Also today

The rest of the day

Your city

Choghadiya for your city

Sunrise moves by about four seconds for every kilometre east, and every window above is a fraction of the day it opens — so Mumbai’s Amrit is not Kolkata’s. Each of these pages carries the same two tables, computed from that city’s own coordinates.

Your chart

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A choghadiya is the same hour for everyone in a city. Your own chart needs your birth date, time and place.

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How this page is worked out

Sunrise and sunset are computed by our own calculation engine for Delhi’s own coordinates (28.6139°N, 77.2090°E), using the disc-centre-with-refraction convention that Indian panchangs use. The sixteen windows are exact eighths of the two real intervals those two instants define — not of a nominal twelve-hour day, which is why they differ from an almanac printed for somewhere else. All times are Indian Standard Time.