Govardhana Pūjā

When it falls

The first lunar day (pratipadā) of the bright half of Kārttika, the day after Dīpāvali, in October or November.

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 herders of Vṛndāvana were preparing their yearly offering to Indra, god of rain, when the boy Kṛṣṇa asked why they thanked a distant god instead of the hill whose grass fed their cows. They turned the offering to Govardhana hill. Indra answered with seven days of storm, and Kṛṣṇa lifted the hill on the little finger of his left hand and held it as an umbrella over every person and animal of the village until Indra gave up.

The story is told against pride and against fear of the powerful. The hill is still walked around by pilgrims, a circuit (parikramā) of about twenty-one kilometres.

In Maharashtra and Gujarat the same day is Bali Pratipadā or Paḍvā, when King Bali returns to visit his people, and in Gujarat it is the first day of the new year.

How the day is kept

• A small hill is built from cooked food, or from cow dung shaped like the hill, and worshipped as Govardhana; this is the Annakūṭa, the 'mountain of food'.
• Temples of Kṛṣṇa, above all in Mathurā and Vṛndāvana and in the Swaminarayan tradition, set out hundreds of dishes in tiers before the image and distribute them afterwards.
• Cows and bullocks are washed, painted and garlanded, and fed first.
• Gujarati families keep the day as new year's day: temple visits in the morning and the greeting Sāl Mubārak.

More festivals of light