Kaulava, the Third Movable Karana

Kaulava is the third karana and the third of the seven movable (chara) karanas. It recurs eight times through the lunar month, each occurrence spanning half a tithi. The almanac tradition reads the movable karanas as broadly benefic, and Kaulava is associated with friendship, sociability, and favourable dealings. Within the panchanga the karana is the finest of the five daily limbs in the sense that it subdivides the tithi, letting the tradition distinguish the first and second halves of a lunar day when judging an auspicious time. These are the conventions of the calendar; the astronomical basis is simply that the Moon completes another six degrees of separation from the Sun over the span of the karana, one of the sixty such steps that make up the synodic month.

Kaulava's name is generally traced to kula, clan or lineage, which fits the almanac's reading of the karana toward sociability, friendship and dealings among kin and community, a reading that sits it naturally alongside Vanija's mercantile association and Bava's general auspiciousness among the seven recurring karanas. As with the other movable karanas, Kaulava recurs at a fixed position in the sequence of eight repetitions across the month, so the same karana governs widely separated dates within a single lunar cycle, and a muhurta chosen for a favourable karana can therefore fall at almost any point in the month depending on where in the sequence of eight repetitions the desired date happens to land.