Yoga in the panchangam is the combined longitude of the Sun and the Moon, divided into twenty-seven parts of 13°20′. It is one of the five angas and it is read as a general quality of the day. Two of the twenty-seven — Vyatipata and Vaidhriti — are consistently set aside for auspicious work.
How it is computed
Take the sidereal longitude of the Sun and the sidereal longitude of the Moon, add them, and divide the total into twenty-seven equal parts. That is the whole computation. It is worth noting that this is a different thing from the yogas of a birth chart — the planetary combinations named in a reading — which share the word and nothing else.
Because both the Sun and the Moon move, the panchangam yoga changes about once a day, and the almanac lists the running yoga with its ending time in the same way it lists the nakshatra.
How much weight it carries
Yoga is generally treated as a secondary factor in muhurtham selection. The four commonly named as inauspicious are Vyatipata, Vaidhriti, Parigha and Vyaghata, with the first two the most consistently avoided; Siddha, Shubha, Amrita and Sadhya are among those commonly named as favourable.
In practice a strong tithi–nakshatra–lagna combination is not usually abandoned because the yoga is indifferent. The yoga more often acts as a tie-breaker between two otherwise comparable windows, or as a reason to avoid a day that would otherwise have looked acceptable.
Where the general rule stops
The lists of favourable and unfavourable yogas differ between almanac traditions, and a yoga taken in isolation says very little. It is one of five angas and is read alongside the rest, not on its own.
Every timing on this page is computed for Hyderabad and Indian Standard Time. For a consequential date, confirm the window with the Purohit conducting the ceremony rather than acting on a published table.
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