Naga, the Serpent Karana

Naga is the tenth karana and the third of the four fixed (sthira) karanas, occurring once in the lunar month on the second half of the new-moon tithi. Its name means serpent, tying it to the Nagas, the serpent spirits, and the almanac tradition gives it a correspondingly cautious, potent character belonging to the dark of the Moon. As a fixed karana it does not rotate but appears at a set point around the conjunction of Sun and Moon. The panchanga treats this new-moon period as suited to ancestral and inward observance rather than bright undertakings. These are the conventions of the calendar tradition, in which the four fixed karanas mark the transition across the new moon while the seven movable karanas carry the rest of the month.

The serpent imagery of Naga connects it to the wider place of serpents in Hindu cosmology as beings of the underworld and as intermediaries with the ancestors, the pitrs, whose ritual worship, shraddha, is itself concentrated in the dark fortnight and especially near the new moon; the almanac's reading of Naga as suited to inward and ancestral rather than outward observance follows the same logic that governs the whole cluster of fixed karanas at this point in the month. Naga occupies the second half of the new-moon tithi itself, immediately before the lunation completes, making it, with Chatushpada, one of the two karanas that span the moment of conjunction between Sun and Moon around which the whole fixed group is built.