Choghadiya: the day in eight parts

Four ghatikas

Choghadiya (also written chaughadiya) comes from chau, four, and ghadi, the ghatika of twenty-four minutes. Four ghatikas make ninety-six minutes, one-eighth of a twelve-hour day. The name describes the system: daylight from sunrise to sunset is cut into eight equal parts, and the night from sunset to the next sunrise into eight more. Each part takes one of seven names.

As with Rahu Kaal, the parts are fractions of the actual day and night, not clock hours. In New Delhi in mid-October a daytime Caughaḍiyā lasts about eighty-five minutes and a night-time one about ninety-five; in June the daytime parts stretch to about an hour and three-quarters and the night parts shrink.

Seven names, seven grahas

Each name is tied to one of the seven weekday grahas, and its traditional quality follows the classical division of grahas into natural benefics and malefics:

Name	Meaning	Graha	Quality
Amrit	nectar	Moon	good
Shubh	auspicious	Jupiter	good
Labh	gain	Mercury	good
Char (or Chal)	moving	Venus	neutral, favoured for travel
Udveg	agitation	Sun	avoided
Rog	affliction	Mars	avoided
Kaal	loss	Saturn	avoided

In the Hora texts the Moon, Jupiter, Mercury and Venus are the natural benefics and the Sun, Mars and Saturn the natural malefics. The choghadiya carries that classification into the day, with Venus's Char softened to neutral.

Why the sequence starts where it does

The first daytime choghadiya belongs to the lord of the weekday, or Vāra: Udveg (the Sun) on Sunday, Amrit (the Moon) on Monday, Rog (Mars) on Tuesday, and so on. From there the names follow a fixed order, the same order that governs the planetary hours, or Horā (planetary hour)s: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and round again. That order is the sequence of the grahas by decreasing period (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon) entered at the Sun. With eight parts and seven names, the eighth part of the day repeats the first.

The night runs differently. Its first choghadiya belongs to the lord of the fifth weekday counted from the day itself, the day counting as the first. Sunday night therefore begins with Shubh, Jupiter's name, since Thursday is the fifth day from Sunday. The night names then step through the seven in a different fixed order, again with the eighth repeating the first.

Here is Saturday, 17 October 2026, in New Delhi:

• Day: Kaal, Shubh, Rog, Udveg, Char, Labh, Amrit, Kaal.
• Night: Labh, Udveg, Shubh, Amrit, Char, Rog, Kaal, Labh.

The day opens with Kaal, Saturn's name; the night opens with Labh, Mercury's, Wednesday being the fifth day counted from Saturday.

Choghadiya and hora

Both systems open the day with the weekday's lord at sunrise, and both use the same order of grahas. The difference is the size of the slice. A hora is one twenty-fourth of the whole day and night; a choghadiya is an eighth of the daylight or of the night. The weekday names themselves come from the same arithmetic: give the twenty-four horas of a day to the grahas in that order, and the first hora of the next day falls to the graha whose day comes next. The weekday-and-hora scheme appears in Sanskrit texts from the early centuries CE, and scholars such as David Pingree have traced it to Hellenistic astrology†.

Where it is used

Choghadiya is used above all in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, and among trading communities from those regions, for business matters, journeys and ordinary undertakings. Gujarati calendars print it for every day, and shops may wait for a Labh or Amrit choghadiya to open new account books at Diwali. It is less used in the South, where Rahu Kaal plays the corresponding everyday role.

Its textual history is thin. The system in this form is not set out in Rama Daivajna's Muhurta Chintamani or the other classical muhurta manuals, and we have not found a securely dated early source for it†. Like Rahu Kaal, it reads as a regional, practical convention that compresses the classical idea of Muhūrta, a fitting time, into a rule anyone can apply.

When systems disagree

A single moment can be good by one system and avoided by another. An Amrit choghadiya can overlap Rāhu kāla; a Labh choghadiya can fall in Vishti karana, which almanacs call Bhadrā (Viṣṭi karaṇa). The systems were never designed together. Regional almanacs apply the system of their own region, and the classical manuals, where they are consulted, rank considerations and weigh one against another. We show each system on its own terms and leave the weighing to the reader's tradition.

What the labels mean

Names such as "loss" and "affliction" describe the traditional character of a period. They do not say that anything will follow from acting in it. We present choghadiya as part of the cultural vocabulary of time, with its arithmetic shown.

Try it

The Choghadiya page shows today's sixteen periods for your city, with the one now running. The Rahu Kaal page shows the periods that South Indian almanacs mark, and the Muhurta tool shows how the classical rules combine.

† Marked dates or readings are debated among scholars or still being confirmed by our faculty.