The pawukon is two hundred ten days long and is built from ten separate week cycles running concurrently rather than in sequence, from the one day ekawara up through the ten day dasawara, each cycle's day names repeating at its own length regardless of what the others are doing. A given date on the pawukon is therefore not a single number but a full set of positions, one in each of the ten concurrent weeks, all at once. Three of the ten matter most for ritual purposes: the three day triwara, the five day pancawara, and the seven day saptawara, whose names will be familiar to anyone who has seen a Balinese temple calendar, Umanis, Paing, Pon, Wage and Kliwon among the pancawara names.
The saptawara and pancawara together generate a thirty five day cycle whose recurring combinations are themselves treated as recurring holy days, most importantly Kajeng Kliwon, when the three day Kajeng and the five day Kliwon fall together, considered a day of heightened spiritual power on which particular offerings and caution are traditionally observed. Unlike a lunar or solar calendar, the pawukon tracks no astronomical cycle at all. Its two hundred ten days are a pure count, and it runs independently of, and concurrently with, the separate lunisolar Balinese Saka calendar that governs other observances on the island.