Dattatreya Jayanti
The Margashirsha full moon — the birth of Dattatreya, in whom the three gods are one.
Where it is kept Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Gujarat and Andhra; the Datta sampradaya centres at Ganagapur, Narsobawadi and Audumbar.
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
Dattatreya is shown with three heads and six arms — Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in one figure — with four dogs and a cow beside him. He is the son of the rishi Atri and Anasuya, and his birth is kept on the Margashirsha full moon, at the evening hour.
The observance in Maharashtra and Karnataka is a seven-day saptah of reading the Gurucharitra, ending today. Fasting, the reading, and the visit to one of the Datta shrines are the substance of it.
Where it comes from
The birth narrative is in the Markandeya and Bhagavata Puranas: the three gods come to test Anasuya's chastity, are reduced by her to infants, and are returned to their forms on Atri's return — with a boon that they will be born to her as one son.
The Datta sampradaya of the Deccan runs through Sripada Srivallabha and Narasimha Saraswati in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose lives are the subject of the Gurucharitra, and later through Swami Samarth of Akkalkot and Sai Baba of Shirdi in some readings.
Why it matters
Dattatreya is the archetype of the guru in the Deccan traditions, and the figure who says in the Bhagavata that he took twenty-four teachers from the natural world — the earth, the wind, a moth, a python, a courtesan — which is the passage most associated with him.
The three-in-one form makes him the point at which the sectarian divisions of Shaiva, Vaishnava and Smarta are set aside, and the sampradaya is deliberately non-sectarian on that basis.
How to celebrate
- Read the Gurucharitra, or the seven-day saptah ending todayThe customary observance in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
- Keep the puja at the evening hourThe birth is placed at pradosh in the tradition.
- Feed a dogThe four dogs beside him are the four Vedas in the iconography, and feeding one is the customary act.
- Read the twenty-four gurus passage of the BhagavataBook 11, chapters 7–9 — Dattatreya's own account of what taught him.
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 treat the sampradaya as Shaiva or VaishnavaIt is deliberately neither, and the iconography says so.
- Do not fast beyond what your practice requiresThe observance is a reading festival more than a fasting one.
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.
- Markandeya Purana and Bhagavata Purana, for the birth to Atri and Anasuya.
- Bhagavata Purana 11.7–9, for the twenty-four gurus.
- Gurucharitra, attributed to Saraswati Gangadhar, sixteenth century, for the sampradaya's own history.
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.
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