Godhuli Bela Time: The Godhuli Muhurat at Sunset

In the muhurta texts, godhuli bela is sunset. The Muhurta Chintamani of Rama Daivajna does not give it a length on a clock; it ties it to the setting Sun itself, so the answer to “godhuli bela kab hai” is the same every evening: at your own sunset. On 1 December 2026 the Sun will set at New Delhi at 17:23, and that is the evening’s godhuli there. The same evening it will come 53 minutes earlier at Guwahati and 38 minutes later at Thiruvananthapuram, and over the year it moves by more than two hours at Jammu.

This page sets out what the text says, the three moments of sunset it names for different seasons and how far apart they are, how long the dusk after sunset lasts, and a year of sunset times for 14 cities.

What the Word Means

Go is cow and dhuli is dust: the name pictures the dust raised by cattle walking home at the end of the day. In modern Hindi the same word, गोधूलि, is also the ordinary word for twilight in general, the half-light that lingers once the Sun is down. The two senses answer “how long is godhuli” differently. In the muhurta text it is a moment at sunset; as twilight it is a stretch of dusk after it. Both are computed below, and the page keeps them apart.

The Godhuli Rule in the Muhurta Chintamani

The rule sits in the chapter on marriage, Vivaha Prakarana 100:

नास्यामृक्षं न तिथिकरणं नैव लग्नस्य चिन्ता
नो वा वारो न च लवविधिर्नो मुहूर्तस्य चर्चा
नो वा योगो न मृतिभवनं नैव जामित्रदोषो
गोधूलिः सा मुनिभिरुदिता सर्वकार्येषु शस्ता

In translation: at godhuli there is no consideration of nakshatra, tithi, karana, lagna, weekday, the lava rule, muhurta, yoga, the house of death (the eighth) and jamitra dosha. The last line reads: “that godhuli, declared by the sages, is praised for all undertakings.” The word for praised is शस्ता. Those ten items are the measures a muhurta is ordinarily weighed by, and the verse sets every one of them aside at this moment. The lava rule is left untranslated here.

To the question whether the godhuli muhurat is good or bad, this page can only report the text: the Muhurta Chintamani says the sages called it praised for all undertakings, and the site adds no verdict of its own. The text goes on, in verse 102, to list exceptions, which this page does not reproduce. For the marriage dates the site works out from its own panchang, see wedding dates for 2026 and 2027.

Three Moments of Sunset, by Season

Verse 101 says which moment of the sunset counts:

पिण्डीभूते दिनकृति हेमन्तर्तौ स्यादर्धास्ते तपसमये गोधूलिः
सम्पूर्णास्ते जलधरमालाकाले त्रेधा योज्या सकलशुभे कार्यादौ

“When the day-maker is pindibhuta in the Hemanta season; half set in the tapa season; fully set in the season of cloud-garlands: in these three ways it is to be applied at the start of every auspicious undertaking.” Pindibhuta, rendered literally, means “become a round mass”; this page reads it as the whole disc sitting on the horizon, round and not yet cut. Hemanta is Margashirsha and Pausha in the lunar count, and the cloud-garland season is the rains, Varsha, Shravana and Bhadrapada; the six ritus page gives those and two other ways of counting the seasons. Tapa is ambiguous. It can mean heat, and so the hot season, or it can stand for Tapas, which is the Vedic name of the first month of Shishir. This page does not choose between them.

The three moments can be computed. The panchang sunset, the one every table on this site prints, is the instant the top edge of the disc goes below the horizon, allowing 0.567° for the bending of light by the air and 0.267° for the Sun’s half-width. Half set is the centre of the disc on the horizon. The whole disc resting on the horizon is the bottom edge touching it. Run through the same solar formula as the site’s sunrise and sunset, the fully set moment reproduces the published sunset to the minute on all 2,014 city-days the build checks.

How Long the Disc Takes to Set

The three moments are minutes apart, not hours. At New Delhi on 1 December 2026 the disc will touch the horizon 2.7 minutes before the 17:23 sunset and be half set 1.3 minutes before it. The table gives the 1st of each month from 1 November 2026; the two offsets are rounded to a tenth of a minute, the sunset is the panchang’s whole minute, and the last column is the civil dusk described further down.

The disc sets fastest near the equinoxes, when the Sun goes down close to due west and so meets the horizon most steeply: 2.4 minutes on 1 April and 1 October. It sets slowest near the solstices, in 2.7 minutes on 1 December, 1 January, 1 June and 1 July. Across the whole year at New Delhi the change is a few tenths of a minute, so in practice the three seasonal moments are the same few minutes of every evening.

Latitude matters more than season. The farther north, the more slantwise the Sun goes down and the longer it takes. On the solstice days of 2027, 21 June and 22 December, the disc takes 2.9 minutes to go at Jammu and 2.4 at Thiruvananthapuram, on both dates.

Godhuli as Twilight: Civil Dusk

In the everyday sense of the word, godhuli is the light after sunset. Its brightest stage, civil twilight, ends by the standard astronomical definition when the centre of the Sun is 6° below the horizon. Measured from the panchang sunset, that civil dusk lasts between 23 and 29 minutes in the cities above on the solstice days, longest at Jammu in June and shortest in the far south. At New Delhi it runs from 24 minutes, on 1 November 2026, 1 March 2027, 1 April 2027, 1 September 2027 and 1 October 2027, to 27 minutes on 1 June and 1 July. The Muhurta Chintamani verses quoted here do not use this measure; it belongs to the modern sense of the word, and it is given as a duration only.

Godhuli Bela Today: Sunset by City

For “godhuli bela aaj kitne baje”, read your city’s sunset. The table gives it on the 1st of each month, cities ordered from north to south; New Delhi’s figures are the site’s daily panchang table, the rest are computed for each city.

The earliest sunset in the table is Guwahati’s, 16:30 on 1 December 2026, and the latest is Jammu’s, 19:42 on 1 July 2027: 3 h 12 min apart. India runs on one clock across a country wide enough that the east sees the Sun go well over an hour before the west. Over the twelve dates, Jammu’s sunset moves by 2 h 18 min and Thiruvananthapuram’s by only 44 min. For any other day and 38 cities, the city panchang pages print the sunset; the panchang tool computes New Delhi only. The point on the horizon where the Sun goes down shifts too, north of west in June and south of it in December, as sunrise and sunset direction in India shows.

Godhuli and the Direction of a Journey

The Muhurta Chintamani names godhuli once more, in the chapter on travel, Yatra Prakarana 54:

उषःकालो विना पूर्वां गोधूलिः पश्चिमां विना
विनोत्तरां निशीथः सन् याने याम्यां विनाऽभिजित्

For setting out, the verse allows ushahkala (the dawn) for every direction but east; godhuli for every direction but west; nishitha (the middle of the night) for every direction but north; abhijit for every direction but south. The direction left out for godhuli is west, where the Sun is then going down, just as the one left out for the dawn is east. The verse gives no clock time for any of them, and neither does this page. The other direction rules travellers check, such as where the Moon stands, are on chandra vasa and the direction of travel.

Other Windows That Begin at Sunset

The same sunset opens several other divisions of the evening. Pradosh kaal starts at it and runs on for three muhurtas. The night’s fifteen muhurtas are counted from it, and their length changes with the length of the night, as the 30 muhurtas of day and night shows; the night’s first prahar begins there as well, in the eight prahars and their length. The morning’s counterpart is Brahma muhurta by city and month, which hangs off sunrise the way godhuli hangs off sunset. In Hindi: गोधूलि बेला कब होती है: गोधूलि मुहूर्त का समय और नियम.

In Brief

• When: at your local sunset; no fixed clock time
• Source: Muhurta Chintamani, Vivaha Prakarana 100 and 101, Yatra Prakarana 54
• What the text sets aside: ten checks, from nakshatra to jamitra dosha
• Three moments: whole disc on the horizon, half set, fully set; 2.4 to 2.9 minutes apart end to end in the cities above
• Twilight sense: civil dusk of 23 to 29 minutes after sunset in those cities on the solstice days
• Sunset spread: 3 h 12 min between Guwahati in December and Jammu in July