Chhath Puja
Four days of fasting on the Kartika bright sixth — arghya offered standing in water, to the setting sun and then the rising one.
Where it is kept Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh and the Nepal Terai; carried by migration to Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.
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 days: Nahay Khay, the bath and the single pure meal; Kharna, a day's fast broken at dusk with kheer and roti, after which nothing at all is taken; Sandhya Arghya, standing in the river at sunset to offer water and fruit to the setting sun; and Usha Arghya at sunrise the next morning. The fast between Kharna and the morning arghya runs about thirty-six hours without food or water.
The offering is made to Surya and to Chhathi Maiya, and the vessels are a soop — a bamboo winnowing fan — holding thekua, sugarcane, coconut and seasonal fruit. There is no priest at any stage and no idol. The vratti stands in the water and makes the offering herself.
Where it comes from
Sun worship in this form is old — the arghya to the sun is Vedic in structure — and the festival is generally regarded as among the oldest continuously observed in India, though its literature is oral and Maithili and Bhojpuri rather than Sanskrit.
The offering to the setting sun is what distinguishes it. Almost no other Indian observance honours the sun going down; here the evening arghya comes first and the morning one completes it.
Why it matters
It is performed without priest, temple, image or intermediary — one of the very few major Indian festivals of which that is true, and its practitioners consistently name that as its character.
The discipline is exceptional: a thirty-six-hour nirjala fast, standing in cold river water at dawn in November. It is kept overwhelmingly by women, and by men who have taken the vow.
How to celebrate
- Keep the sequence — Nahay Khay, Kharna, Sandhya Arghya, Usha ArghyaIt is a four-day observance; the days are not separable.
- Prepare the prasad yourself, on a fresh fire, in a clean spaceThe thekua is made at home under strict purity rules; this is part of the vrat.
- Offer to the setting sun before the rising oneThe evening arghya opens the offering.
- Clean the ghat before and afterThe community cleaning of the riverbank is part of the observance in practice.
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 use anything of leather, and do not wear stitched or worn clothing for the arghyaThe purity rules of the vrat are strict and specific.
- Do not taste the prasad while making itIt is offered before anyone eats it; this is enforced closely.
- Do not enter the water at an unsafe ghat or in the dark without lightDrownings at crowded ghats are an annual occurrence during this festival.
- Do not break the fast between Kharna and the morning arghyaThat span is the vow — roughly thirty-six hours.
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.
- The Chhath observance is transmitted orally in Maithili and Bhojpuri; it has no single prescriptive Sanskrit text.
- Rigveda's Surya hymns and the arghya form of sun worship, as the older ritual structure it draws on.
- Vishnu Purana and Bhagavata Purana references to sun worship on Kartika Shukla Shashthi.
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