Hora

The hora is the panchang's answer to a narrower question than the tithi or nakshatra can settle: given a good day, which hour of it should the work begin? Each hour of the day-and-night cycle is assigned to a planet — Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn — and the hour inherits that planet's nature.

The sequence follows a fixed planetary order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, repeating endlessly. Each day begins at local sunrise with the hora of that weekday's lord — Sunday starts with the Sun's hora, Monday with the Moon's, and so on — and then the remaining 23 horas run in the sequence above. Because 24 is not divisible by 7, the starting planet shifts to a different hour each next day, which is exactly how the weekdays themselves were derived: the planet ruling the first hora of each sunrise becomes that day's name.

Worked example: take a Sunday. Sunrise 6:00 am opens the Sun's hora (6:00–7:00). The sequence then runs Venus 7–8, Mercury 8–9, Moon 9–10, Saturn 10–11, Jupiter 11–12, Mars 12–1, and back to Sun 1–2 pm. A family choosing an hour for opening a savings account on Sunday would shortlist the Jupiter horas — 11 am to noon, and again later in the evening — since Jupiter's hora supports finance and growth.

Hora is the last filter in muhurat practice, applied after day-level checks, and the only one flexible enough for city life: a good hora exists almost every couple of hours. The mismatch case matters too — the Saturn hora, roughly four per day, is avoided for auspicious beginnings, which is how an otherwise clean morning can still have one hour worth skipping. Hora tables appear in most panchang apps alongside choghadiya, its coarser cousin that divides the day into eight parts instead.