Dur Muhurtam today

Dur Muhurtam (Durmuhurtham) is an inauspicious muhurta within the daytime, one fifteenth of the daylight or about 48 minutes, avoided for starting anything auspicious. There is exactly one on each day of the week.

The daylight span is divided into 15 equal muhurtas, and a fixed weekday table selects the unlucky one: the 14th on Sunday, 9th on Monday, 4th on Tuesday, 8th on Wednesday, 6th on Thursday, 4th on Friday, and the 1st on Saturday, one on each day of the week.

Different division and different length. Rahu Kaal is one of eight parts of the day, about 90 minutes; a dur muhurtam is one of fifteen, about 48. They are computed independently and can overlap.

Not in the reckoning this site uses: there is exactly one on every weekday, including Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Widely reproduced tables do give those four days a second window, and if your family panchang shows one that is the disagreement you are looking at rather than an arithmetic error. The reference panchang this site calibrates against lists a single window on all seven days, checked across ten years of its published tables, and we follow the reference.

The same class of things as Rahu Kaal: beginnings. New ventures, journeys, ceremonies and signings. Because the window is short, moving the start by an hour is usually enough.

One fifteenth of the daylight, about 48 minutes when day and night are equal, a little longer in summer and shorter in winter. It is roughly half the length of Rahu Kaal, which takes an eighth of the same daylight, and that shortness is why it is usually the easiest of the avoidance windows to work around.

No. It is a division of the daylight only, so it always falls between sunrise and sunset. Some regional traditions describe a night dur muhurtam as well; this site computes the daytime window its reference panchang publishes and does not invent the other.

Saturday, when it takes the very first of the fifteen muhurtas and so opens with the day itself. It is the earliest position in the table; the week strip above shows where it falls on every other weekday for this city.

The same window in different romanisations. Durmuhurtham is the usual South Indian spelling, Dur Muhurat and Durmuhurtam appear elsewhere, and the underlying term is simply the “bad muhurta”. This site keeps one spelling in the URL so the page is never split in two.

It is generally treated as less serious, and it is certainly shorter. Rahu Kaal is the window most people check and the one most likely to move a decision; dur muhurtam is checked alongside it, particularly when a muhurta is being chosen carefully rather than casually.

Yes, and often does. They are different divisions of the same daylight, fifteenths against eighths, computed independently, so nothing keeps them apart. Both are shown on this page and on the ring above, so an overlap is visible rather than something you have to work out. Where they do overlap, the usual reading is that the more restrictive applies.

The usual reading is that the restriction wins. An Amrit or Shubh choghadiya running at the same time as a dur muhurtam is still a dur muhurtam, and the practical response is the same as for Rahu Kaal: wait for the window to pass, which here means less than an hour.

It is one of the windows checked when a date is fixed, though for a ceremony of that size the muhurta is decided by a full panchang reading rather than by any single avoidance window. Dur Muhurtam rules out part of a day; it does not choose the day.