Chhaṭh Pūjā

When it falls

The sixth lunar day (ṣaṣṭhī) of the bright half of Kārttika, six days after Dīpāvali, in October or November. The rites run four days: the fifth and sixth are the evening and morning offerings.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

The festival belongs to the Sun and to Chhaṭhī Maiyā, the sixth-day goddess, the Sun's sister and the protector of children. The Mahābhārata attaches it to Karṇa, the Sun's son, who stood in water and offered to his father each day, and to Draupadī, who kept the fast for her husbands' return. Nothing in it needs a priest: the family performs everything itself.

It is the festival of Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh and the Terai of Nepal, and it has travelled with them: the ghats of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata fill with it, and the tanks of New Jersey and Toronto too.

Where most festivals worship the rising Sun, Chhaṭh offers first to the setting one. Thanks to the day that has ended come before the request to the day that begins.

How the day is kept

• Nahāy Khāy, the first day: a bath in the river and one meal of rice, gourd and gram dāl cooked in a clean kitchen.
• Kharnā, the second day: a fast from dawn to dusk broken with rice kheer cooked in jaggery, roṭī and bananas, after which nothing, not even water, is taken for thirty-six hours.
• Sandhyā Arghya, the third day: the family walks to the ghat with baskets (daurā) of fruit, sugarcane and ṭhekuā on their heads, and the fasting woman (vratī) stands waist-deep in the water and offers milk and water to the setting Sun.
• Uṣā Arghya, the fourth dawn: the same offering to the rising Sun, and the fast is broken with the prasād.
• The songs (Chhaṭh geet) sung on the walk to the water are the festival's music; Sharda Sinha's recordings are the ones everyone knows.

At the table

Ṭhekuā, the crisp wheat-flour and jaggery biscuit that is the festival's own prasād; kasār (rice-flour and jaggery balls); and whole fruit, sugarcane, coconut and the season's water chestnut in the baskets.

More fasts and vigils