Chatushpada, the Four-Footed Karana

Chatushpada is the ninth karana and the second of the four fixed (sthira) karanas, occurring once in the lunar month on the first half of the new-moon tithi. Its name means four-footed and is associated with cattle and quadrupeds. Like the other fixed karanas it belongs to the dark of the Moon, and the almanac tradition assigns it a specialised, generally cautious character suited to matters of livestock, ancestors, and the closing of a cycle rather than to auspicious openings. These are the conventions of the calendar tradition. The fixed karanas, appearing only around the new moon, contrast with the seven movable karanas that recur eight times each through the rest of the month, and together the eleven fill the sixty half-tithi positions of the synodic month.

Different regional panchanga traditions do not always agree on the precise placement of the four fixed karanas around the new moon to the exact half-tithi, a minor but genuine point of variation among printed almanacs that otherwise agree closely on tithi, nakshatra and the movable karana sequence; Chatushpada's position at the first half of the thirtieth, new-moon tithi is the most commonly given placement but is not universal across every regional calendar tradition. The name's association with four-footed creatures extended in later almanac practice specifically to questions of buying, breeding and the health of livestock, one of the more concrete, practically applied readings among the eleven karanas rather than a broad temperamental description.