Panchangam contains five limbs:
- Vaar
- Thithi
- Nakshatra
- Yoga
- Karana
Additionaly It contains following information:
- Hindu Lunisolar Month name
- Hindu Solar month name
- Festival information
- Muhurtham information.
These information is fairly consitent among panchangams. However they could be using ganitha panchangam (surya siddhantam) or Drika gantitha panchangam (precise ephemeries). If it's telugu panchangam or non-telugu panchangam the basic data it contains are same as mentioned above. A Telugu person doesn't have more than seven days in a week. They are seven only(Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). Similarly, Tithiis presented in panchangam are thirty only. In shukla paksha prathama, dwitiya (vidiya), tritiya (tadiya), chaturthi (chavathi), panchami, shasthi, ... to poornima. Like wise amavasya.
Similarly nakshatras are also 27 (sometimes people say 28 including abhijit nakshatram, but it is part of 27 nakshatras only). I don't think telugu people invented new nakshatras or new tithis or new yoga or new karana. The telugu panchangam might contain names of this tithi or vaara names in telugu language nevertheless information produced is the same.
The real question comes is this. If you get telugu panchangam from india is it valid here in america?
The answer to this question is NO. The panchangam and tithi-nirnay and other important festival observance days are determined if tithi is visible at sunrise, sunset, moonrise or different times of the day. These times can change depending on sunrise and sunset times. The sunrise time varies from place to place depending on longitude and latitudes. For example: Hindu New Year (Yugadi, Ugadi or Gudi Padwa, or Vikram New Year) is observed when chaitra shukla paksha pratipada is visible during sunrise. If it's not visible during sunrise then take the previous day (when pratipada is kshaya tithi). Here important rule is tithi needs to be visible during sunrise. There are other rules for other festival.
Now let's take an example: April 6th 2008. Sunrise for Hydrabad city: 6:10 AM, Tithi Amavasya ends at 9:25 AM, and right after chaitra shukla paksha starts till 6:09 AM. Just at the time of sunrise of next day 6:09 AM. In such case there is no proper spersha, hence Yugadi needs to be celebrated on April 6th, 2008.
Similarly, down the road in Rajahmundry sun rises on April 7th at 5:56 AM. Which clearly means Tithi pratipada is visible during sunrise, Hence they will be celebrating Yugadi, Ugadi on April 7th 2008. If you take two drika panchanga from two different cities in andhra pradesh they might give different yugadi timings. We are not talking surya siddhanta panchangam here, as they can be off by couple of hours if proper bija samskaras are not applied.
It is clear from above example that there can't be one telugu panchangam for entire Andhra Pradesh how can you use the same panchangam in the united states? Alternatively people can argue that they can subtract the time different from indian panchang and decide tithi, but what about proper observance of festival? How many people are panchang siddhanti? A very few.
Additionaly whenever temples publishes panchangam in the united states they try to provide information for telugu, tamil, malayalam, hindi, gujarati speaking people, and they are published in english. I should warn that not all temples publish their calendar using longitudes and latitudes, some temples do copy ditto from the indian calendar published in india.
To find out your son's star or looking for a panchangam? visit http://www.mypanchang.com/ and click on panchanga and select the city you want.
