Panchang 22 August 2026: Dashami Before the Fast
Dashami is the day before the fast. Ekadashi begins at 2:00 AM tonight, so tomorrow is the vrat and today is the preparation. The old habit is to take your last full meal before sunset today and keep everything after it light.
Today's Panchang
Shukla Dashami runs until 2:00 AM, so it covers the whole of today and hands over in the middle of the night. The Moon leaves Jyeshtha at 2:49 PM and enters Moola. Yoga is Vishkambha, karana is Taitila. Sunrise is 5:53 AM in Delhi and sunset 6:55 PM. The Moon is 68 percent lit and waxing.
The Crossing at 2:49 PM
The junction between Jyeshtha and Moola is one of three points Jyotish calls gandanta, which means a knot. A water sign ends and a fire sign begins, and the Moon has to cross the seam between them.
Practice is plain about it. Do not begin anything across a gandanta crossing. Give the half hour on either side of 2:49 PM to something ordinary, then carry on with the day.
Moola is the root star. It digs, it pulls things up by the base, and it suits clearing out far better than building up. That fits the day before a fast, when the point is to empty rather than to add.
Windows to Work Around
Rahu Kaal runs 9:09 AM to 10:46 AM. It sits early, so the first three hours after sunrise are usable and then the mid morning is not. Gulika is earlier still, 5:53 AM to 7:31 AM. Yamaganda takes 2:02 PM to 3:39 PM, which overlaps the gandanta crossing.
The clean stretches today are 10:46 AM to 2:02 PM, and 3:39 PM to sunset at 6:55 PM. Live times are on the panchang for 22 August 2026.
Saturday belongs to Shani (Saturn), who rewards the dull repeatable version of a task over the clever one. Pair Shani with Moola and you get a good afternoon for cleaning, sorting, and throwing things away.
Getting Ready for Tomorrow
Ekadashi is kept without grain. Rice, wheat, and lentils are set aside for the day. Fruit, milk, potato, sabudana, and rock salt are the usual foods where a full fast is not kept.
Eat your last grain meal before sunset today. The fast then runs through Sunday and breaks on Monday morning, 24 August, which is the fourth and last Sawan Somvar of 2026. The two land back to back, so the weekend carries one observance straight into the other. The Sawan calendar is on the Sawan 2026 guide.
A Bead Before the Vrat
People often put a rudraksha on the day before a vrat begins rather than in the middle of one. Sawan gives the reason to start at all, though that is tradition rather than anything set down in the texts we hold.
The Shiva Purana calls the five-faced bead Rudra himself and gives it the name kalagni. Every Naksham bead is an Original Nepal rudraksha, hand selected, and each bead is lab certified on its own. A free lab X-ray certificate ships with every bead at every price. For a bead matched to your own chart rather than picked by habit, the rudraksha calculator reads your kundali and returns the mukhi that fits.
