Balava is the second karana and the second of the seven movable (chara) karanas that rotate through the lunar month. Like the other moving karanas it recurs eight times across the month, half a tithi at a time. In the panchanga the movable karanas are generally read as favourable, and Balava in particular is associated in the almanac tradition with auspicious and benefic activity. As one of the five limbs of the daily panchanga, the karana refines the reading of a given half-day: an astrologer selecting a muhurta, an auspicious moment, weighs the karana together with the tithi, nakshatra, yoga, and weekday. These are the conventions of the calendar tradition, in which the seven recurring karanas cycle continuously while four fixed karanas fall only at the dark of the Moon.
The name Balava is generally connected to the Sanskrit root bala, strength, and the almanac's reading of the karana as suited to undertakings requiring endurance and steady effort follows that etymology, though, as with much of the karana nomenclature, the connection is traditional rather than explained in any surviving source. Electional manuals in the muhurta tradition generally treat the seven movable karanas as differing from one another mainly in degree and in flavour rather than in kind, Bava, Balava and Kaulava all falling toward the favourable end of the scale, so that a client's choice of activity, rather than a sharp difference in the karanas' character, usually decides which of the early movable karanas an astrologer prefers for a given muhurta.