Term
Karanaकरण
Half-tithi
Half of a tithi — each tithi is divided into two karanas, each spanning 6° of Sun-Moon separation. There are 11 karanas in classical panchanga, four fixed and seven repeating. Karana at sunrise determines the day’s karana value.
A karana is half a tithi — 6° of separation between the Moon and Sun, so two karanas make up each 12° tithi and sixty fall in a lunar month. It is the finest of the five limbs of the panchanga.
Although there are sixty half-tithis, they carry only eleven names. Seven are chara (movable) — Bava, Balava, Kaulava, Taitila, Gara, Vanija, and Vishti — and repeat eight times through the month. The other four are sthira (fixed) — Kimstughna, Shakuni, Chatushpada, and Naga — and occur once each, anchored to the very start and end of the lunar month around the new moon.
SahiKundli derives the karana from the same Sun-Moon elongation that gives the tithi: the elongation divided by 6 gives a number from 0 to 59, which maps to the fixed-and-movable name sequence. The karana reported for a date is the one in force at sunrise, and its end time — the moment the elongation next reaches a multiple of 6° — is found by bisection and shown in the location’s timezone.