Kimstughna

Kimstughna is the eleventh and last karana and the fourth of the four fixed (sthira) karanas. It occurs once in the lunar month, on the first half of the first tithi of the bright fortnight, the karana that begins the new lunar month just after the new moon. Its name is glossed as the slayer of what, and unlike the other fixed karanas of the dark of the Moon it is regarded in the almanac tradition as auspicious, fitting for its position at the fresh start of the waxing cycle. These are the conventions of the calendar tradition. With Kimstughna the count of eleven karanas closes: seven movable karanas recurring through the month and four fixed karanas around the new moon, together filling the sixty half-tithis of the synodic month.

The gloss "slayer of what" reflects a name whose precise sense is not fully transparent even within the tradition, and some later commentators offer variant explanations of Kimstughna's meaning without full agreement; what is secure is its function as the karana that opens the bright fortnight immediately after the new moon, the one fixed karana read as auspicious rather than cautious, marking the karana sequence's own return to favourable ground at the same moment the tithi count restarts at Pratipada. Some regional almanac traditions give this eleventh karana an alternate name in vernacular sources, though Kimstughna remains the standard Sanskrit term used in the classical muhurta literature and in most pan-Indian panchanga publications.

Kimstughna is the fourth fixed karana and the only one placed at the beginning rather than the end of the sequence. It occupies position 1, the first half of tithi 1, Shukla Pratipada, which begins at the exact moment of the new moon.

Every other karana starts where the Moon has gained a further six degrees of elongation from some earlier boundary. Kimstughna starts at elongation zero, at the conjunction, and runs until the Moon has gained six degrees. It is the anchor of the whole scheme: the tithi count, the karana count and the fortnight all begin at the same instant, and Kimstughna is what occupies the first slice of it.

Its position also completes the block of fixed karanas. Shakuni at 58, Chatushpada at 59 and Naga at 60 close the waning fortnight, and Kimstughna at 1 opens the waxing one, so the four run consecutively across the new moon and no movable karana falls in that stretch of roughly two days. The reason four positions had to be taken out at all is arithmetic rather than doctrinal: sixty is not divisible by seven, but the remaining fifty six positions are exactly eight rotations of the seven movable karanas, so the cycle closes at the end of every lunation instead of running on broken into the next.

Bava takes over at position 2, and the rotation of seven then runs uninterrupted to position 57.

A karana averages 11 hours and 49 minutes and varies with the Moon's speed.