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In short
Vara is the weekday, one of the five limbs of the panchang, and each vara is ruled by one of the seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn. In this app the vara at birth is counted from local sunrise, not midnight, and the day's vara sets the first hora, the opening choghadiya, the Rahu Kaal slot and the muhurat weekday bonus.
What the term means
Vara means the day of the week, and it is one of the five limbs of the panchang. Each vara has a graha as its lord: Ravivar the Sun, Somvar the Moon, Mangalvar Mars, Budhvar Mercury, Guruvar Jupiter, Shukravar Venus and Shanivar Saturn. In the Vedic reckoning a vara runs from sunrise to the next sunrise, so a birth before dawn belongs to the previous day's vara.
Where the term comes from
Saravali Ch. 7 Sl. 1-3 gives the seven grahas, from the Sun onward, as the lords of the weekdays, and divides each day, from one sunrise to the next, into 24 horas, the first ruled by the weekday's lord. BPHS Ch. 27 Sl. 13 uses the weekday lord as the Dina lord in its temporal strengths and states the same hora rule. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 66-69 distributes the eight parts of a day starting from the weekday's lord. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. II, p. 23) explains the names: each day is named after the planet that rules its first hora, a week of seven days "is called Vara", and in the Hindu calendar "a day always starts from sunrise".
How this app uses it
- Birth vara: the Kundali's birth panchang counts the weekday from local sunrise at the birth place, so a birth at 00:15 on a Tuesday is given Monday's vara. Without a birth time, place or sunrise it falls back to the civil weekday.
- The day's vara fixes the lord of the first hora after sunrise, the opening choghadiya of the day and night, and which eighth of daylight is Rahu Kaal.
- Muhurat scoring gives each activity a set of favoured weekdays; a window on one of them gains 7 points.
- The Varshaphal lists the lord of the weekday on which the annual chart begins as one of its year-lord candidates.
A small illustration
13 October 2026 is a Tuesday, Mangalvar, ruled by Mars. For New Delhi the engine starts the day's horas with Mars at 6:21 AM, opens the day choghadiya with Rog (the name it ties to Mars), and puts Rahu Kaal in the seventh eighth of daylight, 3:01 to 4:27 PM, Tuesday's slot.
Pages that use this term
- Panchang calculator - names the vara among the five limbs.
- Hora calculator - the day's horas from the vara's lord.
- Rahu Kaal calculator - the weekday decides which eighth it is.
- Jupiter in Vedic astrology - Thursday as Jupiter's weekday in Saravali.
- Kundali - your birth vara in the birth panchang.
Related terms
Tithi, Graha, Muhurat and Varshaphal.