The direct answer: What Is Karana? Panchang Meaning: A karana is half a tithi, one of the five limbs of the panchang — Vishti karana is the one linked to Bhadra, not a cursed hour by itself. AskSoma publishes this at asksoma.ai/blog/what-is-karana-panchang as a free Vedic astrology resource using Swiss Ephemeris calculations and classical Jyotish interpretation — not generic sun-sign copy.
A karana is half a tithi, one of the five limbs of the panchang — Vishti karana is the one linked to Bhadra, not a cursed hour by itself.
A karana is half a tithi: the fifth limb of the panchang, sitting beside tithi, vara, nakshatra, and yoga. Eleven names cover the lunar month. Seven rotate. Four sit only near Amavasya and Pratipada. Vishti is Bhadra. AskSoma prints the running karana from Swiss Ephemeris with Lahiri ayanamsa, labeled in the city's local clock. This page teaches the limb. It does not call Bhadra a curse that ruins a day, and it cannot guarantee a marriage, a job, or a visa.
Pancha plus anga: five parts. Tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga, karana. A karana is not a planet and not a weekday overlay. It is the half-step of the lunar day.
A tithi is twelve degrees of Moon–Sun elongation. A karana is six degrees of that same elongation. Two karanas fill one tithi. When someone says the karana has changed, they mean the Moon has gained another six degrees on the Sun. They do not mean a graha turned heavy for the afternoon.
AskSoma derives the limbs from Swiss Ephemeris longitudes with Lahiri (Chitra Paksha) ayanamsa, then prints them in the city's local clock. See /methodology. The daily row lives at /panchang. This page is the karana column explained. It is not a second calendar, not a live Amavasya date table, and not a tithi essay.
Read karana as a set member. A pleasant nakshatra on a mixed tithi with Vishti in the afternoon is a mixed row, not a ruined day. You do not need a birth time. You need a place. Natal yogas live on D1. This limb lives on today's Moon–Sun math.
Classical lists name eleven karanas.
Seven are movable. They rotate through most of the lunar month, in order:
Those seven cycle. After Vishti comes Bava again, until the dark-edge exceptions. Ranking them as lucky or unlucky for a job interview is not this page's work.
Four are fixed. They appear only near Amavasya and Pratipada:
Those four do not rotate through the middle of the month. They sit at the dark-to-new edge. That is why Amavasya talk and karana talk sometimes collide. The collision is a calendar fact, not a stain on the whole day.
Use the names your jantri already prints. A karana can start at 10:41am and end mid-evening. Like a tithi, it is a time range, not a label glued to midnight. Printed almanacs sometimes round to the minute. Do not treat a one-minute discrepancy as a spiritual crisis.
When someone says Bhadra is running, do not start, they mean Vishti. Vishti is the seventh rotating karana. Bhadra is the household name. Same limb. Same six degrees.
Pamphlets then add a story: Bhadra ruins the day, eats the work, is a curse hour. This page will not tell that story. A limb can be a filter some houses use when they elect a start. It is not a moral stain on a Tuesday.
Some North Indian and Gujarati houses treat Vishti as a reason to wait before a named beginning. That is a household rule, not a cosmic verdict. Duty, medicine, a child's need, and a closing deadline have always outranked a six-degree caution.
Vishti is not Rahu Kaal, the weekday eighth of the daylight span. See /rahu-kaal-today. It is not a natal yoga, not Kaal Sarp, and not an ancestral D1 picture. It expires when the Moon has gained the next six degrees.
Karana boundaries are functions of celestial longitude. Clock labels are functions of the observer's civil zone. Change the timezone and the printed hours move. Change the longitude enough and a boundary can fall on different sides of sunrise.
A family in Ahmedabad and a family in San Jose on the same Gregorian date are not looking at the same row. San Jose is roughly twelve and a half hours behind IST. The karana that ends at 4:10pm in Ahmedabad may have already ended before a California morning sitting starts — or may still have hours left. Pasting a Delhi screenshot into a Bay Area WhatsApp group is the usual error.
Many panchangs start the vara at local sunrise. Karana inherits the same city problem. Bhadra this afternoon is a city sentence. Enter the city you are standing in, or the city where the act will happen. Boston, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, San Jose, and London each have their own sunrise and IANA timezone, including US daylight-saving transitions.
Swiss Ephemeris plus Lahiri places the Moon and Sun. Sunrise is computed for the selected coordinates, not copied from a Delhi table. This page asks what a karana is. The daily view at /panchang asks which karana is running now.
In Bengaluru the check often happens after sunrise tea. In New Jersey the trap is an IST widget that has already rolled to the next half-tithi. Set the city once. Read start and end, not just the name.
Read today's karana: /panchang.
This is not a tithi explainer. A tithi is twelve degrees. A karana is six. The sibling page that teaches tithi names is a different draft.
This is not an Ekadashi page. Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi of each paksha. See /ekadashi. Vishti on an Ekadashi afternoon is two limbs on one row, not a second fast.
This is not the daily panchang hub. /panchang prints all five limbs plus overlays. This page teaches one limb so that column is readable.
This is not a live Amavasya date table. Amavasya is a tithi. The fixed karanas sit near it. A new-moon date list is a tithi filter, not a karana lesson. This is not Rahu Kaal either. Keep the clocks apart.
This is a labeled hypothetical, not a ruling for either city.
Suppose a Thursday in March. In Bengaluru, Swiss Ephemeris plus Lahiri show Vanija until mid-afternoon, then Vishti. A household that waits on Bhadra for a bank visit reads the end time and waits, or does not wait, by its own rule. The engine named the limb. The house decides the act.
In San Jose on that same civil Thursday, breakfast may still be Taitila or Gara. A forwarded Bengaluru note that Bhadra is on arrives before Vishti has begun on Pacific time. The aunt in Ahmedabad is not wrong about Ahmedabad. She is wrong about San Jose.
A cousin in London, on British Summer Time, has a third set of labels. A Boston morning in March may still be on standard time. Same Moon–Sun math. Four civil clocks. The city field is the whole difference.
If two engines are both Lahiri and both using an ephemeris, the karana name at a given UTC instant should match. The clock labels will not. When they disagree on the name at the same UTC instant, someone used a different ayanamsa or a rounded pamphlet.
Open /panchang, set the city, read the karana range. If you need a future window for a named act, use /muhurat-finder. This page will not elect your hour. Fix the city before anyone speaks about Bhadra.
A karana describes half a tithi. It does not rank your luck. If you already committed to a date, the limb is information, not a veto. A Tamil panchangam and a Gujarati jantri may print the same Lahiri karana under different margin notes. AskSoma can show the shared limb.
Open today's row at /panchang and read the karana column for the city you are in. Engine notes: /methodology.
Half a tithi — six degrees of Moon–Sun elongation, the fifth panchang limb, not a cursed hour.
Eleven. Seven rotate (Bava, Balava, Kaulava, Taitila, Gara, Vanija, Vishti). Four sit near Amavasya and Pratipada (Shakuni, Chatushpada, Naga, Kimstughna).
Yes. Vishti is the rotating name. Bhadra is the household name. Same limb. This page will not call it a curse that ruins a day.
No. You need a date and a place. Natal yogas are a different instrument.
Timezone and longitude. The sky is the same; the civil clock and the sunrise line are not. Set Boston, San Jose, or London if that is where you stand.
No. Rahu Kaal is a weekday eighth of daytime. Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi. Karana is half a tithi. Read them as separate columns on /panchang.
No. AskSoma cannot guarantee a marriage, a job, a visa, or anyone's health. Treat the limb as one input. See /methodology.
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Written by Savan Vyas, founder of AskSoma.
The astrology is not written from memory: every chart position, dasha period and panchang timing AskSoma shows is computed with the Swiss Ephemeris on the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsa. How we calculate.