Taitila

Taitila is the fourth karana and the fourth of the seven movable (chara) karanas, recurring eight times through the lunar month. In the panchanga it is counted among the benefic moving karanas and is associated in the almanac tradition with prosperity and favourable outcomes. As with all the karanas, its role is to refine the reading of the daily almanac: the panchanga names the tithi, the weekday, the nakshatra the Moon occupies, the yoga formed by Sun and Moon together, and the karana of the half-tithi, and an astrologer weighs all five in selecting a muhurta. These are the conventions of the Hindu calendar tradition, resting on the continuous six-degree steps by which the Moon draws away from the Sun after their conjunction.

Taitila's name is one of the least transparent of the eleven: no clear Sanskrit root is generally agreed to underlie it, in contrast to Kaulava's link to kula or Balava's to bala, and modern popular sources that offer a confident derivation for Taitila should be read with some caution on that particular point. What is textually secure is its position, fourth of the seven movable karanas, and its generally auspicious classification in the muhurta tradition, grouped with Bava, Balava and Kaulava toward the favourable end of the eleven rather than with Vishti at the unfavourable extreme; the almanac's specific associations with prosperity, as with several of the movable karanas, are a later interpretive layer rather than something derivable from the name itself.

Taitila is fourth in the rotation, the middle karana of the seven, and it takes positions 5, 12, 19, 26, 33, 40, 47 and 54 of the sixty in a lunation.

By the rule that position p falls in tithi ceiling of p over two, first half for odd p and second for even, Taitila occupies the first half of tithi 3, the second of 6, the first of 10, the second of 13, the first of 17, the second of 20, the first of 24 and the second of 27. Four fall in the bright fortnight and four in the dark.

Being the middle of seven gives it a property none of the others share exactly: its positions are the ones furthest from both ends of the rotation, so Taitila never occurs adjacent to a fixed karana. Kimstughna is followed by Bava at position 2, and Vishti at position 57 is followed by Shakuni at 58, so the two karanas that touch the fixed block are the first and the last of the rotation. Taitila is always surrounded by other movable karanas.

The duration is the same for every karana and is not fixed: an average of 11 hours and 49 minutes, one sixtieth of the mean synodic month, varying between roughly ten and thirteen and a half hours as the Moon's elongation from the Sun opens at different rates. A single karana can therefore begin and end inside one civil day, or straddle two sunrises, which is why the panchanga gives clock times rather than day assignments.