Where to find your birth time
Bhava asks for three things to work out your Kundali: the date, the time and the place you were born. The date and the place are easy. The time is where most people stop and ring their mum. Here is where a birth time usually hides, how close you need to get, and what to do when nobody in the family knows.
How much the time matters
First, some relief. The 36-point score is worked out from two things: your Moon sign and your Moon's nakshatra, the birth star. The Moon moves slowly. It stays in one sign for about two and a quarter days and in one nakshatra for about a day. So on most birthdays, any time of day gives the same Moon sign, the same birth star, and the same score with everyone.
It matters on the days the Moon crossed from one sign or one nakshatra into the next. If that happened within a few hours of your birth, a morning time and an evening time can give a different birth star, and a different score. You can't tell from the date alone which kind of day yours was, which is why the real time is worth a look.
The time changes other things faster. Your Rising sign moves on about every two hours, and the houses move with it. Whether your chart counts as Manglik depends on which house Mars sits in, counted from the Rising sign, so a time that is hours out can turn the Manglik flag on or off. The fuller picture is in Kundali matching without a birth time.
Start with the birth certificate
If you were born in the United States, look for the long-form certificate, the one that usually names the hospital and the doctor, not the short card. Many states print the time of birth on it.
Indian birth certificates usually don't carry a time. They record the date, the place and the parents, and that is all.
Other countries vary: some record the time for every birth, some only for twins, some not at all. If the certificate is silent, move on.
Hospital papers
The hospital will usually have noted the time, even if the certificate doesn't say it. Ask your parents for the old file and look for:
- The discharge summary, the sheets your parents brought home from the hospital. In India these often have the time written in by hand.
- The baby's weight card or the first vaccination card. The time is sometimes noted next to the weight.
- The hospital's own birth register. Many hospitals keep these for years, and a polite request with your mother's name and the date is sometimes enough.
In many homes the old papers sit in one folder with the school certificates, and nobody has opened it in years.
The janam patri your grandparents had made
Many families had a horoscope made within days of a birth, by the family pandit. It may be called a janam patri, a janam kundali, a jathakam or just the horoscope, and it may be a scroll, a booklet or a few handwritten pages. The time is usually on the first page with the date and the place.
The time may be written the traditional way, in ghatis and palas after sunrise, rather than hours and minutes. A pandit can convert it for you. And the chart itself gives you a check: the patri shows your Lagna, the Rising sign. Enter the time into Bhava and compare the Rising sign on your Cosmic ID with the one on the patri. If they agree, your time is probably close enough for the houses as well as the Moon. If they don't, the time may be a little out; look again rather than worry.
Ask the family
Your mother is the best record you have. Mothers remember birth times better than anyone expects, because it was not a normal day. Even when she doesn't know the clock time, she knows the anchors: before the morning tea, during the afternoon power cut, after your father got back from work, as the temple bell went.
Ask a few people separately and compare. Your father, a grandparent, the aunt who was at the hospital. Ask what was happening, not what the clock said. Then turn the anchors into a window. Late morning is roughly 10 to 12. After dinner is roughly 9 to 11 at night. Use the middle of the window as your time.
One more place: an old letter or telegram to a relative abroad sometimes says "born this morning at seven".
When nobody knows
Sometimes there is nothing. The certificate is silent, the hospital has closed, the patri was never made and no one remembers. Use your best guess. If you have no guess at all, leave the time where Bhava starts it, at 12:00. Midday is never more than twelve hours from the truth, so on most birthdays it gives the same Moon sign and birth star as the real time would.
Bhava doesn't mark a time as approximate and doesn't work one out for you. It uses the time you give it. If your birthday happened to be one of the days the Moon changed star, a guessed time might fall on the wrong side of the line. If a document turns up later, you can change your birth details any time.
Some astrologers offer to work a time out backwards from the events of your life. That is between you and them. Bhava doesn't do it.
How Bhava handles a rough time
When you set up your Kundali, Bhava asks for the date, the time in hours and minutes, and the town or city you were born in. Under the time it says: "Not sure? Ask your mum, or use your best guess. You can change it later." We mean that.
Set the time as the clock read where you were born. Bhava turns your birthplace into its latitude, longitude and time zone, so you don't convert anything. If you were born in Ludhiana at 6:40 in the morning and live in New Jersey now, set 6:40.
Your birth date, time and place are used to work out your chart and your scores, and never shown to other members or their families. People you're introduced to see your age and your chart, never the details.
You can change the time later under Birth details. Your Cosmic ID shows your Moon sign, your birth star, your Rising sign and whether your chart is Manglik, so you can see straight away what a corrected time changed. Often it moves the Rising sign and leaves your Moon sign, birth star and scores where they were.
If you want to see for yourself before you join, try the Kundali matching calculator with your best guess, then again with the other end of your window. On most days the score doesn't move. On the days it does, you'll know the time is worth hunting for. What is Ashtakoota Milan? explains what the 36 points are made of, and Manglik dosh explained covers the one flag that leans hardest on the clock.
