Yamaganda today

Yamaganda (Yamagandam) is a daily inauspicious period of about 90 minutes, one of the eight equal divisions of daylight. It is ruled by Yama and avoided for beginning anything one wants to see completed.

The daylight from sunrise to sunset is divided into eight equal parts. Yamaganda is the 5th part on Sunday, 4th on Monday, 3rd on Tuesday, 2nd on Wednesday, 1st on Thursday, 7th on Friday and 6th on Saturday.

Tradition avoids starting medical treatment, filing or signing documents, and any auspicious beginning. As with Rahu Kaal, ongoing work is not affected.

Rahu Kaal is treated as the stronger prohibition and is the one most people plan around. Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal are usually consulted after it, most often when a specific ceremony or journey is being scheduled.

One eighth of the daylight, about 90 minutes when day and night are equal, longer in summer and shorter in winter. It is exactly the same length as Rahu Kaal and Gulika Kaal on any given day, because all three take an eighth of the same daylight; only which eighth differs.

No. Like Rahu Kaal and Gulika Kaal it divides the daylight only, so it always falls between sunrise and sunset and there is no night Yamaganda to look up.

Thursday, when it takes the very first eighth of the day and so begins at sunrise itself. That is the earliest it ever falls; the week strip above shows where it lands on every other day for this city.

All the same window. Yamagandam and Yamaganda Kalam are the usual South Indian forms, Yamaghanta and Yama Ganda appear in northern sources, and the timings behind them are identical. This site keeps one spelling in the URL so the page is never split in two.

The traditional advice is not to begin a journey inside it, which is the same advice given for Rahu Kaal. Travel already underway is unaffected. Because the window is one eighth of the day, moving a departure by an hour or two clears it.

Only the weekday table. Both take one eighth of the daylight and both are avoidance windows; they simply claim different eighths, so on most days they sit in different parts of the afternoon or morning. Gulika carries a small additional association with Saturn that Yamaganda does not.

It is checked, though it carries less weight than Rahu Kaal in most practice. For a ceremony of that size the muhurta comes from a full panchang reading, and Yamaganda functions as one of several windows that rule part of a day out rather than as the deciding factor.

No. It is one eighth of the local daylight, so it depends on that city’s own sunrise and sunset and shifts with both longitude and season. A time noted down in Chennai will not be right in Delhi, and one noted in June will not be right in December.

No. Both take one of the same eight divisions of the day, and their weekday sequences never select the same part on the same day, so the two windows are always distinct.