Yoga (Panchang)

What is yoga in the panchang?

In the panchang, yoga (nitya yoga) is the fourth of the five limbs. It is the one limb built from both luminaries at once: take the sidereal longitude of the Sun and of the Moon, add them together, and divide that sum into 27 equal parts of 13°20′. Whichever part the total lands in names the yoga of the moment.

Because it tracks the sum of the two longitudes, a nitya yoga advances at the combined speed of the Sun and Moon — a touch faster than a nakshatra, which moves with the Moon alone. So a yoga runs a little under a day on average, and its boundaries seldom line up with either the tithi’s or the nakshatra’s.

This is not the yoga you may be thinking of

The word yoga (“union”) is badly overloaded. The panchang’s nitya yoga is none of these:

• not the yoga of asana and breath (hatha, raja yoga as a discipline);
• not the planetary yogas of a birth chart — Raja yoga, Gajakesari, Neechabhanga and the rest, which are chart configurations, not a daily almanac value;
• not the weekday-and-nakshatra phalita combinations such as Amrita Siddhi or the Ananda-adi cycle — those are a separate Panjika Yoga limb.

The nitya yoga simply describes the Sun–Moon relationship for the day and lends it an overall quality.

The twenty-seven nitya yogas

The names run in a fixed order. Eighteen are read as favourable; nine (marked below) are traditionally handled with care for auspicious beginnings.

The nine yogas to watch

The nine cautioned yogas — Vishkambha, Atiganda, Shula, Ganda, Vyaghata, Vajra, Vyatipata, Parigha and Vaidhriti — are avoided by tradition for weddings, travel and other auspicious starts. Two stand out: Vyatipata and Vaidhriti are the maha-pata (“great fall”) yogas, treated as the most inauspicious of the set and often given their own remedial observances.

Crucially, this classification is a convention, not an engine output. AstroShruti tells you which yoga is running and when it ends; it does not stamp the day “avoid.” Contrast the karana limb, where the Bhadra (Vishti) window genuinely is flagged. Whether a Ganda yoga rules out your particular muhurat is a judgment that weighs the tithi, nakshatra and vara alongside it.

Reading a yoga in AstroShruti

Open the Panchang for any date and location and the yoga sits among the five limbs, with its end moment. An illustrative reading looks like this:

Yoga: Saubhagya — until 21:47, then Shobhana

Read plainly: the combined Sun-plus-Moon longitude currently falls in Saubhagya (the fourth, a favourable “good fortune” yoga); it ends at 9:47 pm, after which Shobhana begins. That end moment is a fixed astronomical instant shown in the local clock time of the date and location you chose, so a city in another time zone sees the same boundary at a different clock reading.

Open the Panchang for any date and location to see the exact nitya yoga, its end moment, and the rest of the day’s limbs computed for your location.

Common mistakes

• Mixing it up with birth-chart yogas. A day’s Ganda yoga says nothing about whether your horoscope has a Raja yoga; they are unrelated uses of the word.
• Reading “caution” as “engine-flagged.” AstroShruti does not classify the nitya yoga — the nine-yoga list is yours to apply.
• Aligning it to the tithi. The yoga moves on the summed longitude, so its boundaries drift against both the tithi and the nakshatra; expect three different end times.
• Treating one caution yoga as a veto. A single inauspicious yoga on an otherwise strong day is weighed, not obeyed blindly.

What AstroShruti computes — and what it doesn’t

AstroShruti computes the astronomical nitya yoga: the Sun-plus-Moon sidereal longitude for any date, time and location, the yoga’s name and index (1–27), and its exact end moment — the same engine that drives every other limb. It also lists the sequence of yogas across the sunrise-to-sunrise day.

What it does not do is grade the day. It does not mark a yoga auspicious or inauspicious, and it draws no life-event conclusions from Siddhi or Shula. The favourable/caution split above is a classical convention; we give you the exact yoga and timing so you can apply that convention — or your priest’s — on solid ground.

Related concepts

• Nakshatra — the Moon’s mansion; the yoga is close kin, but built from the Sun and Moon together rather than the Moon alone.
• Tithi — the lunar day, from the Moon–Sun difference where the yoga uses their sum.
• Karana — the half-tithi, and the limb whose Bhadra window is flagged, unlike the yoga.
• Vara — the weekday, read with the yoga for muhurat.
• Panjika Yoga — the separate weekday × nakshatra yogas (Amrita Siddhi, Ananda-adi), not to be confused with the nitya yoga.