Shubha is the twenty-third nityayoga, and its name means simply auspicious, good, or beautiful. It is one of the favourable yogas, suitable for a wide range of good works, ceremonies, and beginnings. Reckoned like the others from the combined longitude of Sun and Moon divided into twenty-seven equal parts, it advances through the lunar month. In the panchanga it lends its plainly auspicious quality to the reckoning of a muhurta, one of the five daily limbs the tradition weighs. These are the conventions of the calendar tradition, in which each of the twenty-seven yogas carries a settled favourable or unfavourable nature; Shubha, whose very name means auspicious, falls among the most positive. The astronomical basis is the combined motion of Sun and Moon.
Shubha, simply auspicious or good, is among the most common words in the whole of Hindu ritual vocabulary, appearing everywhere from the standard shubh muhurat, auspicious moment, sought before any significant undertaking, to Shubh Deepavali and comparable festival greetings exchanged across much of India regardless of specific astrological knowledge; its use as the twenty-third yoga's name is correspondingly the least specialised or symbolically loaded of the whole set, a plain declaration of favourability rather than a name drawing, as Vajra or Shula do, on a specific mythological image or concrete object.