Tamil Calendar

The fundamental difference is solar versus lunar. Tamil months are named for the zodiac sign the Sun occupies — Chithirai is the month the Sun is in Mesha (Aries), Vaikasi when the Sun is in Vrishabha (Taurus), and so on through all twelve signs. The month boundary is the moment the Sun crosses from one sign to the next (sankranti), which happens within a day or two of the same Gregorian date every year. The Hindu lunar calendar, by contrast, names months after the nakshatra near which the full moon falls — Chaitra, Vaisakha, Jyaistha — and drifts roughly eleven days earlier on the Gregorian calendar each year, corrected every two to three years by an intercalary month (Adhika Maasa). Festivals that Tamil tradition defines by nakshatra or tithi appear on different Gregorian dates year to year, but the solar month that frames them stays stable. Diwali falls in Aippasi month in Tamil reckoning; whether it's early or late Aippasi depends on the lunar tithi calculation that year.

The current Tamil year is Vishvavasu, which began at Mesha sankranti on April 14, 2026. Tamil years cycle through sixty names — a system shared across South Indian calendars including Telugu and Kannada panchangs. The cycle runs: Prabhava, Vibhava, Shukla, Pramoda, Prajapati, Angirasa … through all sixty, then restarts. Vishvavasu is the forty-second year in the sequence. The year that follows Vishvavasu (from April 14, 2027) will be Parabhava. The previous Vishvavasu was 1965-1966; the cycle will revisit it again in 2086-2087. This sixty-year cycle is different from Vikram Samvat, which counts years in a continuous integer sequence rather than cycling through names.

Thiru Ganita — also written Thiruganitham — is the modern drik (astronomical observation-based) calculation method for Tamil panchang. It derives tithi, nakshatra, sunrise, and sankranti times from the actual computed positions of the Sun and Moon using precise orbital models, the same approach used by modern ephemeris software. This produces results that match what you would observe in the sky. The older Vakyam system (vakya = verbal formula) uses tabulated approximation tables handed down in manuscript tradition — accurate enough for most purposes but off by a few minutes on sunrise and nakshatra transition times compared to direct calculation. Most printed panchangs from Chennai, Madurai, Pondicherry, and Coimbatore, and all major online Tamil calendar sources including drikpanchang, now use Thiru Ganita with Lahiri ayanamsa. This app uses the same. If your family follows a Vakyam-printed almanac from a specific mutt, occasional one-nakshatra-day differences are expected near transition times.

Margazhi is the Tamil solar month that roughly spans mid-December to mid-January, corresponding to the Sun's transit through Dhanus (Sagittarius). It is the most intense devotional month in Tamil Vaishnava and Saiva tradition. Vaishnava temples open before 4 AM for Tiruppavai recitation — Andal's thirty verses sung through the month — and Parthasarathy temple in Triplicane and Srirangam's Ranganathaswamy temple see peak attendance. Vaikuntha Ekadasi, the holiest Ekadasi of the Vaishnava calendar, falls in Margazhi on the Shukla Ekadasi tithi; the Paramapada Vaasal (gate of Vaikuntha) is opened at Srirangam in a ritual that draws enormous crowds. Margazhi also marks the Madras Music Season — Carnatic sabhas in Mylapore, T Nagar, and Triplicane run hundreds of concerts through December and early January. Marriage and auspicious new ventures are conventionally avoided in Margazhi. The sunrise in Margazhi is the latest of the Tamil year, which is why the early-morning devotional slots fill before dawn.

Pongal falls on Thai 1, the first day of the Tamil solar month Thai — the day the Sun transits into Makara (Capricorn). This is astronomically the same moment as Makar Sankranti observed across the rest of India as Lohri, Uttarayan, or Bhogi. The date is typically January 14, occasionally January 15. Tamil tradition observes four consecutive days: Bhogi Pongal (eve, clearing out old household goods), Thai Pongal (the main day, rice boiled in an open pot until it overflows at sunrise — the auspicious moment), Mattu Pongal (cattle worship, thanks to the animals that work the land), and Kaanum Pongal (family visits, picnics by rivers). The precise sunrise time for the Pongal pot is published by the Tamil panchang for each city separately, because the auspicious boiling moment is set against local sunrise. This page surfaces that window for your saved city.

This page uses Thiru Ganita computation with Lahiri ayanamsa — the same basis as drikpanchang.com and most contemporary printed panchangs from Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore, and Pondicherry. Daily tithi and nakshatra transition times depend on the sunrise of your specific city, so change your city in the location bar to match your family's home city. Festival dates should then match your printed panchang on nearly every day. If your family follows a Vakyam-tradition almanac — common with certain temple maths and older families in the Thanjavur delta — you may see occasional differences of a few minutes on nakshatra boundaries, which can shift a festival label by one day near transitions. Those differences are inherent to the Vakyam versus Thiru Ganita distinction, not errors in either.