Key Takeaways
- The five parts of a panchang
- Months, and the extra one
- Where the regions differ
- What this means for a shradh date
In This Article
The Hindu calendar is lunisolar: months are counted by the moon, the year is kept in step with the sun, and an extra month is inserted every two or three years to stop the two drifting apart. That one sentence explains most of what confuses people about it — why festivals move against the English calendar, why a death anniversary is not on the same date each year, and why there is occasionally a thirteenth month.
The five parts of a panchang
Panchang means five limbs, and those five are what an almanac actually gives for each day.
| Component | What it is | What it is used for |
|---|---|---|
| Tithi | Lunar day | The one that matters for ancestral rites. 30 in a lunar month, and they do not align with sunrise — a tithi can start and end at any hour |
| Vara | Weekday | The seven days, the same as everywhere else |
| Nakshatra | Lunar mansion | 27 of them. Used for birth charts, naming and muhurta |
| Yoga | Sun–moon angle | 27 combinations, used in choosing auspicious times |
| Karana | Half a tithi | 11 of them, two per tithi |
Months, and the extra one
Twelve lunar months — Chaitra, Vaishakha, Jyeshtha, Ashadha, Shravana, Bhadrapada, Ashwin, Kartika, Margashirsha, Pausha, Magha, Phalguna. Each divides into two fortnights: shukla paksha, the bright half as the moon waxes, and krishna paksha, the dark half as it wanes. Pitru Paksha is the krishna paksha of Bhadrapada.
Twelve lunar months come to about 354 days, eleven short of the solar year. Left alone, the festivals would drift backwards through the seasons the way the Islamic calendar does. The Hindu calendar prevents that by inserting an extra month — adhik maas, the intercalary month — roughly every 32 to 33 months. In a year that has one, the rule for ancestral rites is that the original month is the one used, not the inserted one.
Where the regions differ
The underlying astronomy is the same everywhere; the bookkeeping is not, and this is the second source of family disagreement.
- Amanta — the month ends at the new moon. Followed in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu.
- Purnimanta — the month ends at the full moon. Followed across most of north India.
The consequence: the same dark fortnight carries a different month name in the two systems, which is why a north Indian and a Maharashtrian family can both be right about when a rite falls and still name different months. Add to that the solar calendars of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bengal, Assam and Odisha, which count the year from the sun’s entry into Aries and give the new year in mid-April rather than in Chaitra.
What this means for a shradh date
Annual shradh falls on the tithi of the death, in the same paksha and the same month, every year — which is why it moves against the English calendar by ten or eleven days and then jumps forward when an adhik maas lands. If someone died on Kartika Krishna Dashami, the rite falls on Kartika Krishna Dashami.
If nobody recorded the tithi and only the English date survives — which is the common case after two generations — it can be worked backwards, and we do it for families at no charge. Failing that, Sarva Pitru Amavasya takes shradh for any ancestor whose tithi is unknown, which is precisely what that day exists for.
🙏 We will convert the date for you
- Send the English date of death — we return the tithi and this year’s date
- We will say which panchang tradition we used and why
- No obligation to book anything, and we will tell you if home is enough
- Shradh, pind daan and tarpan at Prayagraj, Gaya, Varanasi and Haridwar
This year’s ancestral dates are on the shradh dates page, and the fortnight itself is covered in the Pitru Paksha guide.
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