Panchang — 16 March 2031, Patna

Sunday 16 March 2031, the panchang for Patna shows tithi Ashtami and nakshatra Jyeshtha, with sunrise at 5:58 am and sunset at 5:58 pm. Every timing on this page is calculated for Patna's own latitude and longitude — not copied from a Delhi almanac — so the muhurat windows below are the ones that actually apply where you are.

What is a panchang?

Panchang literally means "five limbs" (pancha + anga). It is the Hindu almanac that describes a day through five astronomical elements, each derived from the positions of the Sun and the Moon. Read together, they tell you what the day is made of and which parts of it are suitable for which work.

• Tithi — the lunar day, one of thirty in a lunar month. It ends when the Moon gains 12° over the Sun, so a tithi rarely matches a clock day and can start mid-morning and end the next afternoon.
• Vara — the weekday, each ruled by a planet, which is what fixes the Rahu Kaal and Choghadiya sequence for the day.
• Nakshatra — the lunar mansion the Moon occupies, one of twenty-seven. It governs the character of the day and is central to naming, travel and marriage decisions.
• Yoga — one of twenty-seven combinations of the combined longitudes of the Sun and the Moon.
• Karana — half a tithi; there are eleven, and the Vishti karana is what people know as Bhadra.

Why the same day differs between cities

A panchang is not a fixed table — it is a computation anchored to sunrise. Sunrise in Patna differs from sunrise in Kolkata or Mumbai by anything from a few minutes to over an hour, and every derived window shifts with it: Rahu Kaal, Choghadiya, Abhijit Muhurat, Brahma Muhurat and the day-part kaals are all fractions of the interval between sunrise and sunset. A panchang read for the wrong city gives the wrong muhurat, which is why this site asks for a city rather than assuming one.

How these timings are calculated

All calculations follow the Drik Ganita (observation-based) method rather than the older Surya Siddhanta approximations. Solar and lunar longitudes are computed from modern ephemeris data, sunrise and sunset use the standard disc-centre-with-refraction convention, and tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana boundaries are found by solving for the exact moment the relevant angular condition is met. This is the same engine that powers the Dev Panchang Android app, so the two never disagree.