A चीना (chhina) is the birth document a Nepali family keeps for a child. It is worked out from three things and three things only — the date, the exact time, and the place of birth — and from those it derives the position of the sky at that moment, written down in a form that can be read years later at a naming ceremony, before a marriage, or whenever a purohit is consulted.
Traditionally it was written by hand on long folded paper and stored with the family's important documents. The calculation is the same either way; what has changed is that it no longer takes a week and a visit.
What a chhina contains
- Lagna (लग्न) — the sign rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. This anchors the whole chart, and it is why the birth time matters so much.
- The twelve bhavas (भाव) — the houses, each governing a domain of life, and which graha sits in each.
- Graha positions (ग्रह) — the nine grahas by sign and degree, calculated sidereally using the Lahiri ayanamsa, which is the standard the Nepali panchanga follows.
- Panchanga (पञ्चाङ्ग) — the five limbs of the day itself: tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana.
- Gana, yoni and nadi — the three koots that carry the most weight in marriage matching.
- नामकरण अक्षर — the syllable the child's name traditionally begins with, taken from the moon's nakshatra and charan at birth.
- Mangal Dosha — whether Mangal occupies one of the positions conventionally flagged before marriage.
Chhina or kundali — what's the difference?
In practice Nepali speakers use both words for the same thing, and neither usage is wrong. Where a distinction is drawn, kundali refers to the chart — the twelve-house diagram itself — while chhina refers to the whole written document that surrounds it: the chart, plus the panchanga of the day, the naming syllable, and the dosha notes.
A rough way to hold it: the kundali is the diagram, the chhina is the paper the diagram lives on. If you want to compare two charts rather than read one, that is a different exercise — Gun Milan, scored across eight koots out of 36 points.
Why the birth time matters more than the date
The lagna moves through all twelve signs in a day, so it changes roughly every two hours. Shift the birth time by an hour and the ascendant may well shift with it — and because every house is counted from the lagna, the entire chart rotates. Two people born the same day in the same town can have quite different charts.
If the exact time is not recorded, a chhina can still be generated and the graha positions by sign will be broadly right, but treat the house placements as approximate. This is worth saying plainly because many people born at home in Nepal have only an approximate time, and a purohit will want to know that before reading anything into the houses.
The naming syllable
The moon travels through 27 nakshatras, each divided into four charans, and each charan carries a syllable. Whichever charan the moon occupied at the moment of birth gives the syllable the child's name traditionally starts with. This is the part of the chhina families most often ask for first, because it is needed at the नामकरण ceremony — typically on the eleventh day.
Mangal Dosha
Mangal Dosha (also called Manglik) is flagged when Mangal occupies certain houses counted from the lagna. It is one of the most asked-about lines in a chhina before a marriage. It is worth knowing that traditions differ on which houses count and on what cancels the dosha, so a flag in any generated chart is a prompt to ask a purohit, not a verdict. Lami records it because families ask for it, and shows it as a status rather than a judgement.
How to generate a chhina on Lami
- Register free and complete Government ID and photo verification
- Subscribe to any paid plan — or accept the free 30-day Silver if you are a verified woman — to unlock the Kundali tools
- Open the Chhina generator and enter the date, exact time and place of birth
- The document is generated instantly and can be saved or printed as a PDF
Chhina generation sits with Kundali and Gun Milan in the same bundle — all three are included in Silver, Gold and Platinum.
A note on what this is for
A generated chhina is a calculation, and calculations are the easy part. What it does not replace is a purohit who knows your family, your gotra and your circumstances. Use it to have the numbers in front of you — the lagna, the syllable, the dosha status — and take those to the person who will actually read them.
Related
- Kundli matching in Nepal — how the eight koots are scored
- Gun Milan online — the 36-point comparison between two charts
- बिबाह साइत — the published marriage lagan dates
- आजको राशिफल — the daily rashifal