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Key terms
The words that come up again and again in a birth chart or a panchang, explained in plain language.
PanchangThe five-part Hindu almanac of a day.TithiA lunar day: twelve degrees of Moon-Sun distance.Yoga (in the panchang)One of 27 divisions from the sum of Sun and Moon.KaranaHalf a tithi: 60 karanas in a lunar month.Dasha (Vimshottari)A 120-year cycle of planetary periods.Lagna (ascendant)The zodiac sign rising on the eastern horizon at birth.Sade SatiSaturn's seven-and-a-half-year passage around the Moon sign.Mangal doshaMars in certain houses, considered in marriage matching.AyanamsaThe gap between the tropical and the sidereal zodiac.Retrograde (vakri)When a planet seems to move backward in the sky.
See it in your own chart
The terms on this page appear in every birth chart report, explained for your own planets and dates.