Gulika Kaal today

Mostly avoided, but not uniformly. Because what begins in it is said to recur, it is treated as a bad time for anything one would not want repeated (illness, disputes, mistakes), and by some schools as a suitable time for worship, charity, or beginning a practice meant to become a habit.

They are closely related and often used interchangeably. Both refer to a shadow subdivision associated with Saturn; some traditions distinguish Gulika as the period and Mandi as the point that begins it, while others treat the two names as identical.

One eighth of the daylight, around 90 minutes when day and night are equal, more in summer and less in winter. Rahu Kaal and Yamaganda are the same length on the same day; the three differ only in which eighth they take.

No. It divides the daylight only, sunrise to sunset, so it always ends by sunset. Some regional traditions also compute a night Gulika from the night span; this site follows the daytime reckoning its reference panchang publishes.

Gulika is treated in classical texts as an upagraha, a shadow point rather than a body, and is described as Saturn’s offspring, which is where its character comes from. That parentage is also why it is read as slow and obstructive rather than sudden, and why the same window is called Mandi in much of the literature.

The arithmetic is identical and the weekday table is not. Both take one eighth of the daylight, but they claim different eighths, so they usually fall in different parts of the day. Rahu Kaal is the more widely observed of the two; Gulika is checked alongside it rather than instead of it.

No. Each city’s Gulika Kaal is built from its own sunrise and sunset, so it shifts with longitude and with the season. Across India sunrise varies by more than ninety minutes east to west on the same date, and Gulika Kaal moves with it.

The same window under different romanisations. Gulikai Kalam and Kuligai are the common Tamil forms, Gulika Kalam the Telugu and Kannada one, and Mandi the classical Sanskrit name. None is more correct than another; the timings are the same.

It is checked, and generally avoided for beginnings, but it carries less weight in practice than Rahu Kaal. For a wedding the muhurta is set from a full panchang reading and Gulika is one of several windows that rule out part of a day.

Not on the same day. The three take different eighths from the same weekday table, so on any given date they occupy three separate slices of the daylight. They can sit next to each other, which makes a longer stretch worth avoiding, and a city’s page shows all three together at the top.

Saturday is Saturn’s day, and the Gulika sequence assigns Saturn’s own day the first of the eight parts. The window therefore opens with the sun.