If you are familiar with the printed Nepali calendars (patros), this web version of the calendar should be mostly self-explanatory. Here is a short list of questions and answers that may not be obvious to everyone. Note that the words patro and calendar are used interchangeably in this document.
- Are there any special requirements for viewing this website?
- I see square boxes in place of Nepali letters on this website. Why?
- How to read the detailed patro?
- What are the columns named बजेसम्म in the calendar?
- Why are some tithis are skipped on some days and repeated on others?
- Why are some lunar months repeated and others missing?
- Why do some tithis have an asterisk (*) in front of them?
- Are the dates of festivals valid if I don't live in Nepal?
- Is the name found by the birth name calculator valid if I don't live in Nepal?
- Is it necessary to select the DST option on the birth name determination page?
- What are tithis (तिथि), nakshatras (नक्षत्र), yogs (योग), and karans (करण)?
- How do I find out the starting and ending times of a tithi, nakshatra etc.?
- My favourite festival is not listed in your calendar. What should I do?
- Is it true that the year 2066 will have only 11 months?
- Who are you? How can I cantact you?
- Are there any special requirements for viewing this website?
You need a regular computer with a standards-compliant web browser and a modern operating system. You will also need to have Unicode support on your computer as well as appropriate Unicode fonts to display Devnagari script.
Because of the tabular presentation of the calendar, the page may look too big on your computer screen depending on the resolution of your monitor. A minimum screen resolution of 1152x864 is recommended to avoid horizontal scrolling.
Microsoft Internet Explorer has some serious issues with web standards compliance and handling of cascading stylesheets (CSS). So, if you use Internet Explorer (IE) to access this site you may find that some page elements look clunky or they might have been shifted from the normal position. Because of the lack of support for progressive rendering of tables in IE, you will also notice momentary flickers when you use the navigation buttons on the calendar page.
To avoid the above mentioned annoyances, you are strongly advised against using Internet Explorer browser to access this site. Firefox has a very good rendering capability and the page displays beautifully on this browser. Safari and Google Chrome are also good choices.
You will have an enhanced viewing experience if you have Javascript enabled on your browser. Without Javascript, you will not be able to view the ticking Nepali clock, but your general ability to navigate and use this website will not be affected.
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- I see square boxes in place of Nepali letters on this website. Why?
You need to enable Unicode support on your computer and have appropriate Unicode fonts installed. If you are using Windows XP, please go to the control panel and in the "Regional and Language Options", under the "Languages" tab, check the option "Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages".
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- How to read the detailed patro?
The patro is displayed in a tabular format. When you first enter the website, the row of the current date (based on Nepal time) is highlighted. If you press any of the navigation buttons or enter a date in the input boxes, a different row will be highlighted depending on which button you pressed or what date you entered.
The table consists of 12 columns and a variable number of rows. It displays one lunar fortnight (पक्षः) in one page. The columns are as follows from left to right:
- English date (अंग्रेजी)
- Nepali Date (नेपाली)
- Day of week (वार)
- Tithi (lunar day of month) (तिथि)
- Ending time of the tithi (बजेसम्म)
- Nakshatra (नक्षत्र)
- Ending time of the nakshatra (बजेसम्म)
- Yog (योग)
- Ending time of the yog (बजेसम्म)
- Karan (करण)
- Ending time of the karan (बजेसम्म)
- Special events and festivals (विशेष)
The buttons at the top of the patro can be used to navigate to other dates. The button labeled "Today" takes you to the current day. Buttons on its left take you to the past and the ones on the right take you to the future. The buttons labeled "Fortnight", "Month", and "Year" cause jumps of 14 days, 31 days, and 365 days respectively.
The input boxes at the bottom of the patro can be used to directly navigate to a specific date. Both English and Nepali dates are accepted as input. Gregorian dates from 1769 to 2068 or Vikram (Bikram) sambat from 1825 to 2125 are acceptable.
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- What are the columns named बजेसम्मdetailed patro?
Those columns give the exact time until when a particular tithi, nakshatra, yog, or karan is valid. For example if the tithi column says "सप्तमी" and the "बजेसम्म" column says 16:43, it simply means that the "सप्तमी" tithi is valid until 4:43 PM of that day and "अष्टमी" starts at that moment. Some बजेसम्म entries have a "+" sign around them. This is a notation to indicate that the time is for the next day. For example, if you see +4:32+, it means the time is 4:32 AM after the next midnight.
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- Why are some tithis skipped on some days and repeated on others?
Hindu calendars (including Nepali) assume that the day starts at sunrise, unlike most others which assume it starts at midnight. Although the solar day starts at sunrise, the lunar day (tithi) can start at any time during the day or night. Whichever tithi prevails at the time of sunrise becomes the tithi for that day. The exact time until when the tithi is valid is given on the column next to the tithi. Sometimes there may be no sunrises or two sunrises during the period of a particular tithi, which results in skipped or repeated tithis.
The same reasoning explains the skipped or repeated nakshatras, yogs, and karans.
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- Why are some lunar months repeated and others missing?
The lengths of lunar and solar months are not equal. A lunar month is roughly 29.5 days long, whereas a solar month is closer to 30.5 days. However, our calendar system attempts to make them run side-by-side by occasionally repeating (अधिकमास/मलमास) or skipping (क्षयमास) lunar months. Festivals are generally celebrated on regular months in case of अधिकमास and moved to adjacent months in case of क्षयमास. The web calendar is fully aware of such phenomenon and automatically performs the correct computation of lunar months.
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- Why do some tithis have an asterisk (*) in front of them?
Those are tithis of a repeated month (अधिकमास).
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- Are the dates of festivals valid if I don't live in Nepal?
In general, No. However it requires a longer explanation to understand why you may not want to be bothered by it.
Some events, particularly our festivals, are based on the lunar date. Lunar date is dependent on the time of sunrise. So, the date of those events may not be accurate for your location if you are not in Nepal. The only reliable way to achieve accuracy is to take the local time of sunrise into account. Remember that converting your local time to Nepali time is not sufficient to correct this problem. It basically requires creating a local version of the calendar. While it is possible to create a different calendar for each city in the world, it is culturally senseless. If you are a purist, you may want to rethink the use of Nepal made calendars if you do not live in Nepal, because they may not be accurate for your location. But for the majority of people, calendars made for Nepal are good enough in practice. Most Nepalis living abroad are generally happy to celebrate festivals based on the Nepali calendar published in Nepal. However, if you are really particular about the timing, you should be aware that the dates and times of special events that you believe to be accurate may not really be so, if you do not take the above situation into account. This problem is not specific to this web version of the calendar, but it is equally applicable to the printed calendars that you buy in Nepal and bring overseas.
Note that the starting and ending times of tithi, nakshatra etc. shown in the calendar are valid regardless of where you live. All you need to do is convert your time to Nepali time. The above mentioned problem mainly pertains to the celebration of festivals or any event that directly or indirectly depends on the sunrise.
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- Is the name found by the birth name calculator valid if I don't live in Nepal?
Yes. It is independent of where you live.
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- Is it necessary to select the DST option on the birth name determination page?
Yes, it is important that you select the appropriate DST (Daylight Savings Time) option. Many cities around the world move the clock forward one hour during the summer. You must know whether daylight savings time was active in your city at the time of birth to get the correct results. However, if the birth time has already been manually converted to standard time from the daylight savings time, you should deselect the DST option. DST is completely ignored if "Nepal, Kathmandu" is selected for timezone.
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- What are tithis (तिथि), nakshatras (नक्षत्र), yogs (योग), and karans (करण)?
The word panchanga (पञ्चाङ्ग) is used to describe a day. The literal meaning of panchanga is five organs, and it symbolizes five aspects of a day — day-of-week (वार), lunar phase (तिथि), nakshatra (नक्षत्र), yog (योग), and karan (करण). Here is a very brief description of each:
- वार (baar): Same as day-of-week and repeats every 7 days.
- तिथि (tithi): A lunar month is divided into 30 parts, each of which is approximately one day long. Each day is assigned a name known as tithi.
- नक्षत्र (nakshatra): It represents the position of the moon in the sky. There are 27 nakshatras. On some systems, an intercalary nakshatra known as Abhijit is also included, which makes a total of 28 nakshatras.
- योग (yog): The literal meaning of "yog" is addition or combination. The positions of the sun and the moon taken together in the sky gives 27 possible yogs or combinations.
- करण (karan): Karan is half of a tithi. There are 7 cyclic (चर) and 4 stationary (स्थिर) karans. By using a pattern of repetition they together make up a cycle of 60, i.e. twice the number of tithis. Of particular importance in Nepali calendar is the karan Bhadra (भद्र), which is generally considered to be inauspicious.
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- How do I find out the starting and ending times of a tithi, nakshatra etc.?
The column बजेसम्म next to tithi gives the ending time of that particular tithi. The starting time of the tithi is same as the ending time of the previous tithi, so it can be read from the previous row. Occasionally, a tithi may be skipped, in which case the starting time cannot be read from the previous row. In such a case, both the starting and ending times of the tithi are displayed on the same row. The starting and ending times of nakshatra and yog are found in the same way.
Determining the starting and ending times of a karan is a bit different because a karan only lasts for approximately half a day. One needs to consider the starting and ending times of the tithi as well as that of the karan to determine the exact starting and ending times of all karans. Note that in the calendar, every other karan is hidden to save space. If you are familiar with the way a karan is determined from the printed calendars of Nepal, you should have no difficulty using this web version.
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- My favourite festival is not listed in your calendar. What should I do?
The cultural diversity in Nepal is phenomenal given its size. This calendar is designed to be multicultural within Nepal. It is possible that there may be festivals and celebrations in Nepal that are not listed in this calendar. If you believe that a festival is missing, even if it is not celebrated by everybody in Nepal, please do let us know about them. If you would like to suggest a festival, please use the contact form with sufficient details about the festival.
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- Is it true that the year 2066 will have only 11 months?
[Note: the government's proposal to reform the calendar was unsuccessful. This question remains here only as historical information.]
Astronomers have long recognized the phenomenon known as precession of the equinoxes and the resulting gradual drift of the solar months in relation to the seasons. The points of equinoxes move anticlockwise at the rate of about one degree every 72 years on the plane of the ecliptic causing the seasons to arrive approximately 20 minutes earlier every year. The seasons drift has accumulated to almost 24 days in the last 1700 years and affects the calendars that do not make regular adjustments to this effect. Fast forwarding our calendar by 24 days will align the months with the seasons that they represented almost two thousand years ago. Then the start of the year would roughly coincide with the start of the spring season (बसंत), or the vernal equinox.
The current government's proposal is to skip the twelfth month Chaitra (चैत्र) of year 2066 so that the accumulated shift is accounted for. In addition to the fast forwarding, other measures are necessary to prevent future accumulation of the shift. By skipping an entire month we will be one week ahead of the seasons. So, if no other measures are taken to compensate for the ongoing shift, we will have the correct seasonal alignment in about 500 years from now.
[Go to Top]Until more details emerge of how exactly the changes will be implemented, this online patro will use existing calculations to compute future dates, and so there will still be twelve months in year 2066. However, once sufficient details of the calendar adjustments become available, the software will be appropriately modified to reflect the changes and it should give correct results for the affected dates
- Who are you? How can I cantact you?
Some background information about this website is available on the about page. You can send your feedbacks, comments, error-reports, or questions through the contact form . Alternately, if you prefer emails, you can send email to the following email address:
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