Parigha is the nineteenth nityayoga, and its name means an iron bar or a barrier that blocks a gate. It is one of the inauspicious yogas, associated with obstruction and impediment, and the panchanga counts it among the configurations to be avoided for auspicious undertakings, especially those that need a clear path. Like the others it is derived from the combined longitude of Sun and Moon divided into twenty-seven equal parts. In choosing a muhurta an astrologer sets aside the malefic yogas, and Parigha, with its image of the barred gate, is one the tradition treats with caution. These are the conventions of the calendar tradition, which fixes the character of each yoga; the astronomical basis is only the summed motion of the two lights through the month.
Parigha combines pari, around or surrounding, with the root ghatt, to strike or fix in place, together describing a bar drawn across and fixed to block a gateway, the everyday defensive fitting the word names outside any astrological context in descriptions of fortified cities and palace architecture in classical Sanskrit literature. The yoga's association with obstruction is thus drawn from a specific, concrete piece of everyday material culture, a literal iron door-bar, rather than from a more abstract or mythological source the way several of the other inauspicious yogas, Vajra's divine weapon or Shula's piercing point, draw on.