---
type: Reference
bundle: jyotisha-kala
bundle_version: 0.12.0
id: lagadha-vedanga-jyotisha
title: Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa (Lagadha)
description: 'The oldest extant Indian astronomical text, preserved in Ṛk and Yajus recensions: the arithmetic of a five-year yuga (1,830 days, 62 synodic months, 1,860 tithis) built to fix the times of Vedic ritual. Contains no horoscopy.'
tags:
- reference
- lagadha
- vedanga-jyotisha
- calendrics
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa (Lagadha)

Attributed to Lagadha and carrying an internal astronomical dating in the second millennium BCE, the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa survives in two recensions (Ṛk, 36 verses; Yajus, 43-45 verses, evidently edited later). Its program is ritual calendrics: the five-year yuga with its counts of days, months, tithis, and nakṣatra visits of Sun and Moon, intercalation, and rules for locating the luminaries by nakṣatra so the parvans and sacrifices land on the right day. This bundle cites it as the anchor of the Vedāṅga stratum: calendrical, computational, and entirely without the horoscopic apparatus of later horā literature.
