Chatushpada

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.

Chatushpada is the second of the four fixed karanas and holds a single position in the lunation, position 59, which is the first half of tithi 30. Tithi 30 is Amavasya, the new moon day, so Chatushpada is the half-tithi that runs up towards the conjunction of the Sun and Moon.

The position is not incidental to how the karana is used. Amavasya carries the observances for the ancestors in much of the tradition, and the two karanas that divide it, Chatushpada and Naga, are the only two that ever occur on it. Between them they account for the whole of the darkest day of the month, and they occur once each per lunation and never anywhere else.

The four fixed karanas exist because sixty is not a multiple of seven. Removing four from the sequence leaves fifty six positions for the seven movable karanas, which is eight complete rotations, so the cycle closes cleanly at the new moon instead of being cut in the middle. Three of the four fixed karanas were placed at the end of the waning fortnight and one at the beginning of the waxing, which gives an unbroken block of four across the conjunction: Shakuni at 58, Chatushpada at 59, Naga at 60 and Kimstughna at 1.

The duration is the general one. A karana averages 11 hours and 49 minutes, one sixtieth of a synodic month, ranging from about ten hours to about thirteen and a half as the Moon's speed changes.