The occasions that are not festivals — gṛha praveśa, vivāha, vidyārambha, mundan, a new shop, travel
The popular claimA festival has a date. An occasion has to be given one, and the texts say how.
Every other page in this section is about a day that already has a date, and the work is to compute where it falls. These occasions are different. Nobody has decided when your housewarming is; the tradition offers a way to decide, and it is worth seeing how that way is built before using it.
What a muhūrta is
A muhūrta is a span of the day — forty-eight minutes, one thirtieth of a day-and-night — chosen because the sky at that moment meets a stated list of conditions. The conditions come in layers. The pañcāṅga layer asks about the five limbs of the day: the tithi, the vāra, the nakṣatra, the yoga and the karaṇa, each with a list of values that are fit or unfit for the occasion. The graha layer asks where the planets are — which sign is rising, whether the Moon is strong, whether Jupiter and Venus are visible rather than combust. The personal layer asks how the day sits against the person: the Moon's position from their birth nakṣatra (the tārā-bala), the day's sign from their Moon sign (the candra-bala), and for some rites the transit of Jupiter over the natal chart.
The classical treatises — the Muhūrta Cintāmaṇi is the one most used — set these out occasion by occasion. What follows is what they ask for, in outline, not the full tables.
Gṛha praveśa — entering a house
The nibandhas want the Sun in a fixed or dual sign for the first entry into a house — Uttarāyaṇa preferred, the months of Māgha, Phālguna, Vaiśākha and Jyeṣṭha named as best — with the rainy months and the period when Viṣṇu sleeps, from Āṣāḍha śukla Ekādaśī to Kārttika śukla Ekādaśī, set aside. Within the day: a fixed sign rising, the Moon well placed, and a nakṣatra from the lists of the fixed and gentle groups — Rohiṇī, Mṛgaśira, the three Uttarās, Puṣya, Anurādhā, Revatī among them. Bhadrā is refused. The Dharmasindhu adds a separate short rule for the entry into a house one has merely repaired or returned to.
Vivāha — marriage
The most elaborate table in the treatises, because the most is at stake. The Muhūrta Cintāmaṇi devotes its longest chapter to it. The core: a month with the Sun in one of the permitted signs; a nakṣatra from the marriage list; Jupiter and Venus both visible in the sky; a rising sign that is not the eighth from the bride's or groom's Moon; and a long list of exclusions around eclipses, combust planets, and the personal charts of the two. The daśā-based and kūṭa matching that most families mean by "matching horoscopes" is a different exercise — it decides whether, not when — and it has its own page under Compatibility.
Vidyārambha — the beginning of study
The occasion for a child's first letters, and for the older rite of Upanayana. The treatises ask for Uttarāyaṇa, a weekday other than Saturday and Tuesday, a nakṣatra from the group associated with intellect — Hasta, Citrā, Svātī, Aśvinī, Puṣya, Punarvasu, Śravaṇa, Revatī, the Uttarās — and the Moon and Mercury free of affliction. Vasanta Pañcamī, the fifth of Māgha's bright half, is the fixed day many families use for the first letters precisely because it removes the need for a search.
Cūḍākaraṇa — mundan, the first haircut
The Gṛhyasūtras place it in the first or third year; the muhūrta treatises want the Sun in Uttarāyaṇa, the child's birth month and birth nakṣatra avoided, the mother not in the later months of another pregnancy, and a nakṣatra from the gentle group — Mṛgaśira, Puṣya, Hasta, Citrā, Svātī, Śravaṇa, Dhaniṣṭhā, Revatī, the Punarvasu group. Tuesday and Saturday are refused. There is a full page on the rite under Samskāra.
A new shop, a new venture
The treatises treat the opening of a business under vyāpāra-ārambha. They want Mercury and Jupiter strong, a fixed or dual rising sign, a nakṣatra from the fixed or swift groups, and Thursday, Friday or Wednesday. Bhadrā, the eighth tithi and the fourteenth are refused. This is the page's own category: Darshan itself was opened on a muhūrta computed by this engine, and the record of that election is on the muhurta page.
Yātrā — setting out
The oldest of these tables, and the one with the most direction-specific rules. The treatises refuse certain directions on certain weekdays — diśā-śūla — and require the Moon's position, counted from the traveller's birth nakṣatra, to be favourable. Tuesday, Saturday and the eighth and fourteenth tithis are avoided for a long departure. The rules assume a journey on foot or by cart and were never revised for aircraft, and this page does not pretend otherwise; it reports them as the texts state them.
Why the answer depends on you
Every one of these tables has a personal layer: the tārā-bala and candra-bala are counted from the person's own birth nakṣatra and Moon sign. That is why two people asking about the same week can honestly be given different days, and why a printed list of "auspicious dates for housewarming" in a magazine is at best the pañcāṅga layer alone. This site's Best Date tool runs all three layers from the birth details you give it and shows which conditions each candidate day passes and fails.
What this page does not say
It does not say that a house entered on the wrong day will go badly, or that a journey begun on a Tuesday will fail. The treatises state conditions; a muhūrta is a day that meets them, and this page is an account of the conditions. Whether to search for one at all is a choice the reader makes, and the tradition has always allowed that an act done in good faith on an ordinary day is still done.
Source — Muhurta Chintamani of Rama Daivajna and Muhurta Martanda, the standard treatises on electional rules; Dharmasindhu on griha-pravesha and yatra; the Grihyasutras (Ashvalayana, Paraskara) on the samskaras named; the panchanga elements computed by this site's engine
Every claim on this site names its source, and every calculator shows its arithmetic.