Mahā Śivarātri

When it falls

The fourteenth lunar day (caturdaśī) of the dark half of Māgha (Phālguna by the northern count), the night before the new moon, in February or early March. A Śivarātri falls every month; this is the great one.

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

The story

Three stories are told for the night. Śiva and Pārvatī were married on it. Śiva drank the poison that rose from the churning of the ocean, holding it in his throat, and Pārvatī and the gods kept him awake through the night lest it spread. And on this night Śiva first appeared as a column of light (jyotirliṅga) without beginning or end, which neither Brahmā nor Viṣṇu could measure.

The Purāṇas add a hunter who spent the night in a bel tree to escape a tiger, and dropped leaves to stay awake, and did not know the leaves were falling on a liṅga below. The unknowing worship saved him. The story is told so that no one thinks their own is too small to count.

The night is also the last dark of winter; the moon is at its thinnest, and the vigil until dawn is the tradition's answer to it.

How the day is kept

• A fast through the day, with fruit and milk at most, and no sleep through the night.
• The liṅga is bathed (abhiṣeka) in each of the four watches of the night: with milk, curd, honey, ghee, sugar and water, then dressed in bel leaves, the three-leaved sprig that is Śiva's own.
• Oṃ Namaḥ Śivāya is chanted, the Rudram recited, and the Śiva Purāṇa read aloud in temples.
• The twelve jyotirliṅga temples, Kāśī Viśvanāth in Vārāṇasī and Paśupatināth in Kathmandu draw the largest crowds; Isha Foundation's Coimbatore vigil runs through the night with music.

More fasts and vigils