Introduction
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday: we say these names every day. In the panchang the weekday is called vaar, and it is one of the five limbs. The tithi comes from the Moon, but the vaar comes from the Sun: one vaar runs from one sunrise to the next.
Each weekday is named after a planet, and that planet is taken as the day's lord.
The seven weekdays and their lords
| Vaar | Lord |
|---|---|
| Ravivar (Sunday) | Sun (Surya) |
| Somvar (Monday) | Moon (Chandra) |
| Mangalvar (Tuesday) | Mars (Mangal) |
| Budhvar (Wednesday) | Mercury (Budh) |
| Guruvar (Thursday) | Jupiter (Guru) |
| Shukravar (Friday) | Venus (Shukra) |
| Shanivar (Saturday) | Saturn (Shani) |
Rahu and Ketu rule no weekday. Tradition links each day to the nature of its lord: Monday is a popular day for Shiva puja, Thursday for honouring the guru. Muhurta texts such as the Muhūrta-cintāmaṇi weigh the weekday together with the tithi and nakshatra when choosing a day, never on its own.
Why the Vedic day starts at sunrise
Clocks and calendars change the date at midnight. The panchang changes the vaar at sunrise. So if a baby is born at 4 am on Tuesday and sunrise is at 6, the panchang still counts that birth in Monday's vaar.
This matters for birth charts and for muhurtas. Many people are puzzled to see a different weekday in their kundli than on the calendar; this is the reason. The time before sunrise belongs to the previous vaar.
Sunrise differs from city to city, so ePandit works out the vaar and the rest of the panchang from sunrise at your own place.
Hora: the hours of the day and their lords
Tradition divides the day and night into 24 horas, each with a planetary lord. Many panchangs split daytime (sunrise to sunset) and night (sunset to sunrise) into 12 parts each, so a hora is not always exactly 60 minutes.
The hora lords come in this order:
Sun → Venus → Mercury → Moon → Saturn → Jupiter → Mars, and then the Sun again.
This order comes from the planets listed from slowest to fastest (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon). The first hora of each weekday belongs to that day's lord. Sunday opens with the Sun's hora, Monday with the Moon's.
How the hora gives the order of the weekdays
This is a lovely piece of arithmetic. Sunday opens with the Sun's hora. Count 24 horas through the cycle above: three full rounds of seven make 21, and three more follow: Sun, Venus, Mercury. The next one, the 25th, belongs to the Moon, and it is the first hora of Monday.
Each day the cycle moves three steps on, and the familiar order Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday falls out by itself. The order of the week comes from this hora count.
Vaar and hora in ePandit
ePandit's daily panchang shows the vaar and the lord of the running hora for your city. Tradition suggests doing some things in the hora of a suitable lord, but this is a small supporting idea. A muhurta looks at the tithi, nakshatra and the whole panchang together, not one item alone.