Agni Vaas for Havan: Rule, Chakra and Dates, 2026–2027

Agni vaas, the “dwelling of the fire”, is a check that muhurta texts apply when timing a homa. It takes two numbers, the tithi and the weekday, does one division, and from the remainder assigns the sacrificial fire to one of three places: Prithvi (earth), Akash (sky) or Patala. The verse that states the rule singles out the earth placement for a homa. Because the tithi changes at a clock instant while the weekday changes at sunrise, the answer is not one per date but a set of windows, and this page works them out for every vaar from Sunday 1 November 2026 to 30 December 2027. The first of those vaars will open in earth and pass to sky at 14:52 IST.

The Verse and How the Count Is Made

The rule is a single verse. Its first line reads सैका तिथिर्वारयुता कृताप्ता शेषे गुणेऽभ्रे भुवि वह्निवासः । The second line opens सौख्याय होमे, “for well-being in a homa”, which is the verse’s own grading of the earth placement; the rest of that line places the other two remainders in the sky and in patala and attaches results to them that this page does not reproduce.

This page draws on two printed sources that carry it. The Samskara Ratnamala quotes the verse from the Jyotirnibandha and notes that, by the practice of the astrologers, the count begins from Shukla Pratipada. The Muhurta Sadhana gives it as verse 79 of its Nana-muhurta-prakarana, and the Hindi gloss under it spells the arithmetic out:

1. Number the tithi from Shukla Pratipada as 1 through Purnima as 15, then Krishna Pratipada as 16 through Amavasya as 30.
2. Add one.
3. Add the number of the weekday. The puja manuals that tabulate the rule read this as Sunday 1, Monday 2, and so on to Saturday 7.
4. Divide by four and keep the remainder. A remainder of 3, or none at all, gives earth; 1 gives sky; 2 gives patala.

The weekday is the Hindu vaar, which begins at sunrise. A homa before dawn on a Monday morning by the clock still falls in Sunday’s vaar; the sunrise vaar page shows how much of each night belongs to the day before.

Agni Vas Kaise Nikale: Three Worked Examples

Shukla Panchami is tithi 5. On a Thursday (weekday 5) the sum is 5 + 1 + 5 = 11; four goes into it 2 times with 3 over, so the placement is earth. Krishna Ashtami is tithi 23. On a Sunday (weekday 1) the sum is 23 + 1 + 1 = 25, which leaves 1 after 6 fours, so the placement is sky.

A real day shows why one answer per date is not enough. Monday 2 November 2026 will begin at the New Delhi sunrise (06:33) in Krishna Ashtami: 23 + 1 + 2 = 26, remainder 2, patala. At 13:11 the tithi will turn to Krishna Navami: 24 + 1 + 2 = 27, remainder 3, earth. The same vaar will be patala until 13:11 and earth from then until the next sunrise.

Which Rites the Texts Apply It To

Neither source applies the check to every fire offering. The Samskara Ratnamala asks for it before a kamya homa, one undertaken for a desired end, and quotes the line nitye naimittike karmany agnichakram na vidyate: for daily rites and for rites tied to an occasion, the fire chakra does not apply. The Muhurta Sadhana’s next verse and its gloss list the exemptions by name: samskaras such as marriage, a Vishnu yajna, the daily agnihotra, naimittika rites such as Mool shanti, and birthday rites. Those are the texts’ own exemptions; this page adds none and removes none.

The Agni Vas Chakra: 30 Tithis by 7 Weekdays

Run the count for every tithi-weekday pair and the result is the grid below, the agni vas chakra. Of its 210 cells, 105 are earth, exactly half, because two of the four possible remainders give earth; 53 are sky and 52 patala. Every tithi has either three or four earth weekdays (15 tithis have four), so no tithi is excluded on every day of the week and none qualifies on all seven. Earth cells are highlighted.

How the Placement Moves Through a Day

Each time the tithi moves on, its count rises by one, and so does the remainder; each sunrise adds one to the weekday and does the same. The placement therefore walks through a fixed cycle, earth, earth, sky, patala, then earth again. There are two exceptions. At the new moon the count falls from 30 to 1, which moves the remainder back by one, and between Saturday and Sunday the weekday falls from 7 to 1, which moves it forward by two. Across the 425 vaars in the range the computation behind this page checks every edge: 431 tithi changes, 15 of them at the new moon, and 424 sunrises, 60 of them from Saturday into Sunday. No tithi edge in the range coincides with a New Delhi sunrise.

A vaar usually holds two tithis, so it usually holds two placements: 310 of the 425 vaars split that way. Only 7 hold three; 108 keep one placement from sunrise to sunrise, 98 of them earth and 10 sky or patala. A vaar holds three tithis when a tithi starts and ends between two sunrises, which happens 20 times in the range (the kshaya tithi list names each one). Because the two earth remainders sit next to each other in the cycle and no vaar holds more than three tithis, no vaar in the range has two separate earth windows. An earth window that runs to the end of one vaar carries on past sunrise into the next 95 times.

Sunrise Reading or Clock Windows

Measured by the clock, the earth placement covers 50.0% of the time in the 425 vaars, close to the half that the chakra would suggest. Counted by vaar instead: 210 vaars, just under half, begin in earth at sunrise; 102, about one in four, contain no earth window at all; 98 are earth from one sunrise to the next. Of the 323 earth windows the shortest, on Saturday 9 January 2027, will last 8 minutes.

Counting daylight alone changes the figures. Between New Delhi sunrise and sunset, 265 vaars reach earth at some point and 160, more than a third, do not. A list that reads only the sunrise tithi gets daylight wrong in both directions: 50 of the 210 vaars that start in earth leave it before sunset, and 55 vaars that start outside it enter it before sunset.

The tithi instants come from the JPL DE421 ephemeris with the Lahiri ayanamsa, cut to the minute in IST, and they are the same clock times anywhere in India. The vaar edges are New Delhi sunrises, the same sunrises the site’s daily panchang prints. In another city a window that starts or ends at sunrise moves with that city’s sunrise, and a window that opens close to dawn can shift into the neighbouring vaar.

Agni Vaas Calendar, November 2026 to December 2027

Each row is one vaar, named by the date of its sunrise. The tithi column is the tithi current at that sunrise; the last column gives the earth window in IST, with the date added where it runs past midnight, or “none” where the whole vaar is sky or patala.

What This Page Does Not Give

It states no result for a homa held in any window, earth or otherwise; the arithmetic can locate a window but has no way to test what follows from using it. It is not a full muhurat either. Agni vaas is one of several checks that puja manuals list before a homa, and the ahuti rule that both sources give next, keyed to the Sun’s nakshatra, is not computed here. The tithi-group and weekday tests on the Rikta tithi page and the dagdha tithi page are separate again.

Related Pages

The count that puja manuals quote for shiv vaas, used before a Rudrabhishek, reads the tithi alone; it is set out on the shiv vaas page. The panchang section lists each date’s tithi and sunrise for New Delhi. In Hindi: अग्नि वास कैसे निकालें: हवन का नियम, चक्र, तारीख़ें 2026-27.

In Brief

• Count: tithi number (1 to 30 from Shukla Pratipada) + 1 + weekday (Sunday 1), divided by four
• Remainder: 3 or 0 earth, 1 sky, 2 patala; the verse grades earth for a homa
• Chakra: 105 of 210 tithi-weekday pairs are earth; every tithi has three or four earth weekdays
• Through the day: 310 of 425 vaars change placement once, and none has two separate earth windows
• Daylight: 160 vaars reach no earth placement between New Delhi sunrise and sunset
• Scope: the Samskara Ratnamala asks for it before a kamya homa; the sources exempt daily, occasion-bound and named rites
• Not given: any result of a homa, or a muhurat beyond this one rule