Krishna Panchami

Krishna Panchami is the twentieth tithi overall, the fifth day of the waning fortnight, sharing the character of the fifth tithi, a Purna or full day linked to the Nagas, the serpent spirits. As a Purna tithi it is read in the panchanga as relatively stable and favourable even within the dark half. The waning Moon is now past its gibbous phase and moving toward the last quarter. Certain regional observances attach to particular dark-fortnight Panchamis, and the serpent associations of the fifth tithi carry across both fortnights. These are the conventions of the calendar tradition, which counts each of the fifteen tithi-numbers once in the bright fortnight and once in the dark, distinguishing them by paksha.

The Naga association carried by the fifth tithi persists into the dark fortnight even though the major public festival, Naga Panchami, is kept in the bright half, and several regional traditions maintain quieter household observances to serpent deities on the waning Panchami as well, reflecting how thoroughly the tithi's deity assignment, rather than the specific festival built on top of it, governs the general character ascribed to a day in panchanga practice. As a Purna tithi the waning fifth is read as comparatively steady even though it falls within the generally less favoured dark fortnight, illustrating that the fivefold classification and the waxing-versus-waning distinction operate as two separate, sometimes conflicting layers of judgment that a traditional astrologer weighs together rather than reducing to a single verdict.

The tithi is the oldest of the five limbs of the panchanga and the least intuitive, because it is defined by an angle in the sky and not by a sunrise. Krishna Panchami occupies the arc from 228 to 240 degrees of that separation. The Moon does not move at a fixed rate, and the same twelve degrees may take a little over nineteen hours near perigee or close to twenty six near apogee. A calendar has to name whole days, so the rule is that whichever tithi is current at sunrise gives the day its name. A tithi shorter than the interval between two sunrises can therefore be skipped entirely, which the tradition calls a kshaya tithi, and one longer than that interval can carry its name over two civil days, an adhika or vriddhi tithi. Both occur in the ordinary course of a year, and both are why an observance can appear on two dates in the same almanac.

Each tithi is halved again, and each half carries a karana, so the first half of Krishna Panchami carries Kaulava, the third, and the second Taitila, the fourth. Seven of the eleven karanas repeat, cycling eight times through the month, while four are fixed to particular half tithis at the month's opening and close.

The Moon is waning through this arc, rising later each night and showing about 79 per cent of the disc lit. The phase follows from the elongation and not the other way round, so the tithi and the shape of the disc are two readings of one measurement.