Ugādi

When it falls

The first lunar day (pratipadā) of the bright half of Caitra, the new moon after the March equinox, in late March or early April. The day is fixed by sunrise: the tithi that holds at dawn names the day.

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

The story

Yuga-ādi is the beginning of an age. The tradition says Brahmā began creation on this day, and the almanac (pañcāṅga) for the new year is read aloud in temples today so that everyone hears what the year holds: the rains, the harvests, and the outlook for each birth star. The lunar year is named, one of sixty in a cycle, so a name repeats only once in a lifetime.

Maharashtra keeps the same day as Guḍī Pāḍvā and raises a guḍī, a pole with a bright cloth, a garland and an upturned pot at its top, from the window; Sindhis keep Ceṭī Caṇḍ, Kashmiris Navreh, and the Konkani-speaking coast Saṃvatsara Pāḍvo.

How the day is kept

• An oil bath before dawn, new clothes, and mango leaves strung across the door.
• Ugādi pacchaḍi is made and tasted first: neem flowers (bitter), jaggery (sweet), raw mango (sour), tamarind (tangy), salt and green chilli (hot), one spoon, all six tastes at once, for a year taken whole.
• Pañcāṅga śravaṇam: the year's almanac is read in the temple or by the family priest in the evening.
• Kavi sammelanam, poets' gatherings, are the Telugu evening; Karnataka's Yugādi keeps bevu-bella, neem and jaggery, in the same spirit.

At the table

Ugādi pacchaḍi, then bobbaṭlu or holige (flat sweet bread with a lentil-jaggery filling), pulihora (tamarind rice) and in Maharashtra śrīkhaṇḍ with pūrī.

More new years