Sankranti

The Hindu calendar tracks both Moon and Sun. While tithis and pakshas follow the Moon, the Sun has its own milestone: sankranti, the moment it crosses from one sidereal sign into the next. Twelve of these crossings a year give the solar calendar its joints, and each one changes the panchang's advice for that day.

The most celebrated is Makar Sankranti, the Sun's entry into Capricorn in mid-January — the festival of kites in Gujarat, pongal harvest in the south, and one of the few Indian festivals fixed to the Sun rather than the Moon, which is why it lands on nearly the same Gregorian date every year. The other eleven — Mesh, Vrishabh, Mithun, Karka, Simha, Kanya, Tula, Vrishchik, Dhanu, Kumbh and Meen Sankranti — pass with less celebration but more calendar consequence: each starts a new solar month in most regional reckonings.

Worked example: the panchang notes Karka Sankranti on July 16 at 2:47 pm. Traditional practice divides the day: charity and remembrance in the hours before and after the crossing, and no auspicious beginnings within roughly the sankranti period — commonly taken as 16 muhuratas (about 12 hours) around the exact moment. A wedding planner screening July dates would strike that afternoon entirely and prefer the neighbouring days.

The crossing itself is treated as a threshold: the Sun, the soul of the chart and the king of the planets, is mid-move, and tradition prefers not to launch anything while the throne changes hands. What sankranti is used for is giving — the texts prescribe donations of food, clothes and cattle on these days, graded by the month, with the thought that charity performed at a cosmic turning point carries forward through the whole new cycle.

Sankranti also explains a small mystery: the Hindu "first of the month" often falls mid-Gregorian-month and drifts, because solar months run sign-crossing to sign-crossing at about 30.9 days, not the clock's tidy 30 or 31.