Chaitra Navratri begins
Nine nights of Devi worship in the bright half of Chaitra, opening on the same tithi as the lunar new year and closing on Rama Navami.
Where it is kept Northern and western India, most strongly in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh.
When it falls
Computed from the Moon's elongation from the Sun. The civil day is the one carrying the tithi running at sunrise.
Overview
Four Navratris fall in the year and two of them are kept publicly. This is the spring one — Vasanta Navratri — beginning on Chaitra Shukla Pratipada and running nine tithis to Navami, which is also Rama Navami. It opens with Ghatasthapana: a clay pot filled with water, a coconut set on its mouth, barley sown in earth around its base, installed at a fixed spot in the house and not moved for nine days.
The barley is the part worth watching. It is sown on the first morning and sprouts through the nine days; its colour and vigour are read as a sign for the year's crop. This is a spring harvest festival wearing the clothes of a goddess festival, and the two readings sit together without contradiction.
Where it comes from
The nine-night structure and the nine forms invoked in it — Shailaputri, Brahmacharini, Chandraghanta, Kushmanda, Skandamata, Katyayani, Kalaratri, Mahagauri, Siddhidatri — are set out in the Devi Mahatmya, the section of the Markandeya Purana recited through the nine days. That text is generally dated to around the sixth century CE, and is the earliest work to treat the Goddess as the supreme principle rather than a consort.
The spring Navratri is the older of the two great ones in ritual terms; the autumn Sharadiya Navratri became the more public festival, largely through the Bengal Durga Puja and the Gujarat garba, both of comparatively recent form.
Why it matters
It is the only Navratri that ends in the birth of Rama, which links the Devi observance directly to the Ramayana calendar — nine nights of the Goddess, and on the ninth day at noon, the birth of the avatara. Households that keep the fast break it on Rama Navami, not on the tenth day.
For those who keep it, the nine days function as an annual reset: one meal a day, no grain, no onion or garlic, and no alcohol or meat in the house. The discipline is the observance; the puja is its frame.
How to celebrate
- Install the ghata at sunrise on the first tithi and leave it undisturbedGhatasthapana is done in the first third of the day, and the pot is not moved until the ninth night is over.
- Sow the barley in clean earth around the potThe sprouting is watched through the nine days; it is part of the rite, not decoration.
- Keep the lamp burning without a break if you have vowed an akhand jyotiAn unbroken lamp is a vow; if you cannot guarantee the nine days, do not begin one.
- Recite or hear the Durga SaptashatiThe Devi Mahatmya is the text of the festival, read a chapter a day or in full.
- Feed young girls on Ashtami or NavamiKanya pujan closes the observance in most households — an odd number of girls, fed and given a small gift.
What to avoid
These are not all the same kind of thing. Some are prohibitions from a named text, some are Indian law, some are practical, and some are a confusion worth not repeating. Each item says which it is.
- Do not eat grain, onion or garlic while the fast is keptThe permitted foods are the phalahar list — buckwheat and water-chestnut flour, sabudana, fruit, rock salt.
- Do not cut hair or nails, or shave, during the nine daysA common household restriction for the duration of a vrat; it is custom rather than scripture, and observed unevenly.
- Do not leave the house empty of one member if an akhand jyoti burnsThe lamp is not to be left unattended — a practical rule that became a ritual one.
- Do not break the fast on DashamiThis Navratri ends on Navami with Rama Navami; the tenth day is not part of it, unlike Sharadiya Navratri which closes on Vijayadashami.
Where this comes from
Everything above is either computed by this site’s own panchang engine, or drawn from the works listed here. Where a custom is modern, commercial or contested, the page says so rather than presenting it as ancient.
- Devi Mahatmya (Durga Saptashati), Markandeya Purana chapters 81–93, for the nine forms and the narrative recited through the festival.
- Nirnayasindhu, for Ghatasthapana in the first part of the day and for the tithi rules at the start and close.
- Kalika Purana, on the four seasonal Navratris.
Dates are computed for the place named above and will differ elsewhere. Regional traditions vary; where two reckonings are in use, both are named rather than one being chosen silently.
Other festivals
All festivals, with dates for any year · The calendar on the home page