What is Choghadiya, and how do you read it?
Choghadiya (चौघड़िया) comes from cho, four, and ghadi, an old unit of about twenty-four minutes, and one period is roughly four ghadis. The daylight from sunrise to sunset is cut into eight equal periods, and the night from sunset to the next sunrise into eight more. Seven names rotate through them in a fixed order, so with eight slots to fill, the first name always comes round again as the eighth: every day and every night opens and closes on the same Choghadiya. Reading it takes one line: Amrit, Shubh and Labh are auspicious, Char is neutral and perfectly usable, and Udveg, Rog and Kaal are the ones set aside when choosing a moment to begin.
What do the seven Choghadiya names mean?
Seven names fill the eight slots, each one carrying a graha, and the sense of a period follows from that graha. Three of the seven, Amrit, Shubh and Labh, are the auspicious ones, Char is neutral and genuinely usable, and Udveg, Rog and Kaal are the three tradition passes over when picking a moment to begin. Each name falls once in the eight daylight periods, except the one that opens the day, which comes round again as the eighth. That is the whole of the claim being made: they are periods to schedule around, not periods that do something to you.
Amrit: nectar, ruled by the Moon
Amrit (Moon) means nectar, and it is the best regarded of the seven. It is the window tradition reaches for when nothing about the undertaking points to a more specific slot: a first journey, a purchase, an application, a conversation you want to start well. Because it carries no speciality of its own, it is also the easiest to advise: if an Amrit period is free and clear of Rahu Kaal, there is rarely a reason to keep looking.
Shubh: auspicious, ruled by Jupiter
Shubh (Jupiter) means auspicious, and it is the ceremonial one. Weddings, a housewarming, a first offering, the opening of a religious observance and any rite that a family would otherwise commission a formal muhurat for are traditionally set inside it. Jupiter's association with counsel and blessing is the reason, and it is why Thursday, Jupiter's own weekday, opens on Shubh rather than on any of the other six names.
Labh: gain, ruled by Mercury
Labh (Mercury) means gain, and it is the commercial window. Opening an account, launching a shop, signing for a loan, beginning a course of study, starting a negotiation or sending a proposal all sit here in ordinary practice. Mercury governs trade, speech and calculation, so anything transactional or anything that turns on being understood is put in Labh where the day allows it.
Char: movable, ruled by Venus
Char (Venus), sometimes written Chanchal, means movable, and it is the travel window: setting out on a journey, a move, a delivery, anything whose whole point is going somewhere. It is graded neutral, which is not the same as weak; the tradition prefers it outright for departures, over the three auspicious names. Treating Char as second best is the most common misreading of the table.
Udveg: agitation, ruled by the Sun
Udveg (Sun) means agitation or unrest, and it is the mildest of the three that get passed over. Tradition simply prefers not to open something new inside it, particularly anything needing patience from other people. Nothing is being said about work already in progress, and nothing is being said about what happens to a person who uses it. Every Sunday opens on Udveg, and Sunday carries its full share of Amrit, Shubh and Labh later on.
Rog: illness, ruled by Mars
Rog (Mars) means illness, and it is set aside for beginnings much as Udveg is. The name is the sense Mars carries in the older texts, not a forecast about anyone's health, and the tradition attaches no penalty to working through it. It is the period Tuesday opens on, because Mars rules Tuesday, which is why the day is sometimes read as unpromising when in fact only its first ninety minutes or so are the ones being avoided.
Kaal: time or delay, ruled by Saturn
Kaal (Saturn) means time, and in this context delay. It is the third of the periods tradition passes over, on the reasoning that what starts under Saturn takes longer to arrive than expected. Saturday opens on Kaal for the same reason Tuesday opens on Rog: the weekday's own graha takes the first slot. Neither is a verdict on the day, only on where the wheel begins turning.
Why does today's Choghadiya start with a different name?
The first period of the day belongs to the graha that rules the weekday, and everything else follows from there. Sunday opens on Udveg (Sun), Monday on Amrit (Moon), Tuesday on Rog (Mars), Wednesday on Labh (Mercury), Thursday on Shubh (Jupiter), Friday on Char (Venus) and Saturday on Kaal (Saturn). The rotation itself runs Udveg, Char, Labh, Amrit, Kaal, Shubh, Rog, the same descending order the hora system uses. So Tuesday beginning on Rog and Saturday on Kaal is not a verdict on those days; it is simply where the wheel happens to start when Mars and Saturn own the day, and both days carry their full share of Amrit, Shubh and Labh later on.
Which Choghadiya is best for new work?
Amrit first, then Shubh, then Labh, and the choice between them depends on what you are starting. Amrit suits almost anything. Shubh is the ceremonial one: weddings, housewarming, a first offering. Labh is the commercial one: opening an account, launching a shop, signing for a loan, beginning a course. Char (also called Chanchal) is preferred for setting out on a journey, because its sense is movement rather than mildness. In practice the useful discipline is to take the earliest good window that does not overlap Rahu Kaal, rather than hunting for a perfect one and losing the day to the search.
What is the difference between day and night Choghadiya?
They are two separate eightfold divisions, and they are rarely the same length. The day set spans sunrise to sunset; the night set spans sunset to the next sunrise. The night rotation for a weekday begins five places further along the cycle than the day's, so Sunday night opens on Shubh, Monday night on Char, Tuesday night on Kaal, Wednesday night on Udveg, Thursday night on Amrit, Friday night on Rog and Saturday night on Labh. The lengths trade places across the year: in Delhi a day period runs about 77 minutes at the December solstice while a night period runs about 103, and at the June solstice it is nearly the reverse, about 105 minutes by day.
Should I use a good Choghadiya that falls inside Rahu Kaal?
Usually not, and it is worth knowing in advance which days force the question. Choghadiya and Rahu Kaal are both eighths of the same daylight, cut at the same boundaries, so Rahu Kaal always covers exactly one Choghadiya period. Sunday's is Udveg, Monday's Kaal, Tuesday's Shubh, Wednesday's Rog, Thursday's Amrit, Friday's Kaal and Saturday's Rog. On five of the seven days the collision costs nothing, because the covered period was already one to avoid. Only Tuesday and Thursday put a genuinely good window inside Rahu Kaal, and the ordinary practice is to skip it and take the next. See today's Rahu Kaal alongside this table.
Why is the Choghadiya different in Mumbai, Jaipur and Ahmedabad?
Every boundary is measured from local sunrise, so two cities on the same date get different tables. On 10 September 2026 sunrise fell at 6:10 am in Jaipur, 6:25 in Mumbai, 6:24 in Ahmedabad and 5:21 in Kolkata, so two thirds of Kolkata's first Choghadiya had passed before Mumbai's began. India runs one clock across about thirty degrees of longitude, which is where most of that spread comes from; latitude then changes the length of the day and so the length of every period inside it. A Choghadiya table published for the country as a whole is really a table for one unnamed city.
Which sunrise convention decides the Choghadiya?
Sunrise can be defined in more than one way, and the definition moves every one of the sixteen boundaries. We use the ordinary sunrise, the one almanacs and most online panchangs show: the instant the upper edge of the Sun clears the horizon, with atmospheric refraction included. Some printed panchangs keep the older classical definition, the Sun's geometric centre on the true horizon with no refraction, which in India comes about three to four minutes later and sets three to four minutes earlier. Their day is therefore some seven minutes shorter, each period about a minute shorter, and the later boundaries differ by several minutes.
Is aaj ka choghadiya the same as today's Choghadiya?
Yes, aaj ka choghadiya is simply the Hindi for today's Choghadiya, and aajna choghadiya the Gujarati; the table is identical whichever phrase brought you here. The system is kept most closely in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, where it is the everyday alternative to commissioning a formal muhurat, and neither the names nor the rotation change from region to region. What does change is the sunrise the table is cut from, so the detail that matters is not the language of the question but the city in it. This page is written in English, with the terms in their usual transliteration.
How this is calculated
Nirayana rashis with the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsha and whole-sign bhavas, computed to arc-second accuracy. Sunrise and sunset are the ones almanacs show, the Sun's upper edge with refraction, so the daily windows agree with the calendars you compare them with. More on our method.