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Hora and Choghadiya

How Hora and Choghadiya divide the same day

Hora splits daylight and night into twelve parts each, Choghadiya into eight. See both on one Delhi day, and how season and weekday change them.

01 · Two divisions of one day

Hora cuts daylight and night into twelve parts each; Choghadiya into eight.

Both start at sunrise and both treat daylight and night separately, so their parts change length with the season. They are different sequences with different names, and their boundaries rarely meet.

Hora and Choghadiya in Delhi, Sunday, JuneTwo rows from sunrise at 05:23 to the next sunrise at 05:24 in Delhi, 21 June 2026. The upper row is the 24 horas, each named by its planet; the lower is the 16 Choghadiya slots, coloured by their traditional quality. Both split daylight and night separately. Day horas 70 min, night horas 50 min · first hora Sun, first Choghadiya Udveg.DELHI, SUNDAY 21 JUNE 2026Hora: 12 by day, 12 by nightSuVeMeMoSaJuMaSuVeMeMoSaJuMaSuVeMeMoSaJuMaSuVeMeChoghadiya: 8 by day, 8 by nightUdvegCharLabhAmritKaalShubhRogUdvegRogSunset 19:21Sunrise 05:2305:24
Delhi, Sunday 21 June 2026Day horas 70 min, night horas 50 min · first hora Sun, first Choghadiya Udveg
Hora and Choghadiya from the site’s Panchang for Delhi, IST. Night horas are shaded blue. Choghadiya colours: green favourable, beige neutral, red avoided, in the tradition’s labels.

Two grids over one day

A Panchang day runs from one local sunrise to the next, and both of these systems divide it in the same first step: daylight, sunrise to sunset, is one stretch, and night, sunset to the next sunrise, is another. Each stretch is then cut into equal parts.

  • Hora (होरा) cuts each stretch into twelve, so a day has 24 horas, each named after one of the seven classical planets.
  • Choghadiya (चौघड़िया) cuts each stretch into eight, so a day has 16 slots, each with one of seven names: Udveg, Char, Labh, Amrit, Kaal, Shubh and Rog.

Because daylight and night are divided separately, the parts are equal only at the equinoxes. In Delhi on 21 June 2026 a daytime hora lasted 70 minutes and a night hora 50; on 20 December it was the other way round, 52 and 68. A hora is an “hour” only on average.

Different sequences

The two grids share sunrise and sunset and little else. Twelve and eight have only four as a common divisor, so a hora boundary meets a Choghadiya boundary only every third hora, at the end of every second Choghadiya slot. Their names come from different sequences too:

  • The horas follow the planets in the order Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, then Sun again, continuing straight through sunset and night. The first hora after sunrise is the weekday’s own planet: the Sun on Sunday, the Moon on Monday.
  • The Choghadiya names follow their own order, and each weekday starts the day and the night at a set point in it. In Delhi the Sunday day began with Udveg, the Monday day with Amrit.

So any moment carries two independent labels, one from each grid, and one can change while the other holds. Neither system is a subdivision of the other.

The hora guide and the Choghadiya guide give the traditional uses and qualities.

Further reading

See today’s horas and Choghadiya on the Delhi Panchang, or explore another topic in Learn.