Kṛṣṇa Janmāṣṭamī

When it falls

The eighth lunar day (aṣṭamī) of the dark half of Śrāvaṇa (Bhādrapada by the southern count), in August or early September. Kerala fixes it by the star Rohiṇī instead.

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

The story

Kṛṣṇa was born at midnight in the prison of Mathurā, the eighth child of Devakī and Vasudeva. His uncle Kaṃsa had killed the first six because of a prophecy that the eighth would kill him. That night the chains fell open, the guards slept, and Vasudeva carried the baby across the flooding Yamunā to Gokula, where he was swapped for the newborn daughter of Nanda and Yaśodā.

He grew up a herder's son, stealing butter, playing the flute, dancing with the cowherd girls, and killing every demon Kaṃsa sent. He returned to Mathurā as a young man and did what the prophecy said. The Bhagavad Gītā is his teaching on the battlefield at Kurukṣetra.

Mathurā and Vṛndāvana, his birthplace and childhood, fill for the night; the Dvārakādhīśa temple and the Bāṅke Bihārī temple hold their midnight āratī to crowds of many thousands.

How the day is kept

• A fast is kept through the day and broken after the midnight birth, marked by conch and bells and the bathing of a small Kṛṣṇa image in milk, curd, honey and ghee.
• A cradle is decorated and the infant Kṛṣṇa rocked in it; small footprints are drawn in rice flour from the door to the shrine, as if he had just walked in.
• Dahī Haṇḍī the next day in Maharashtra: a pot of curd hung high in the street and human pyramids of young men (govindā) climbing to break it, as Kṛṣṇa raided the hung butter pots of Gokula.
• In Tamil Nadu and Kerala the day is Gokulāṣṭamī, with butter, aval (flattened rice) and the little footprints; in Gujarat, Dvārakā keeps the night with the Chappan Bhog (fifty-six dishes).

At the table

Butter, curd and milk sweets, since these were what the child stole; pañcāmṛta, the five-nectar mix; and in the south, seedai and murukku fried for the day.

More birthdays of gods, saints and teachers