Gita Jayanti
Mokshada Ekadashi — the day the Bhagavad Gita is held to have been spoken on the field at Kurukshetra.
Where it is kept All India; Kurukshetra in Haryana holds the principal observance, with a state-run Gita Mahotsav.
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
The eleventh tithi of bright Margashirsha is kept as the day Krishna spoke the Gita to Arjuna between the two armies. It is also Mokshada Ekadashi, and the Ekadashi vrat is kept alongside — the fast and the reading together.
The observance is a reading. The whole of the Gita, seven hundred verses in eighteen chapters, is recited or heard in one sitting where possible, and at Kurukshetra the Gita Mahotsav runs for several days around it.
Where it comes from
The Gita occupies chapters 23 to 40 of the Mahabharata's Bhishma Parva. Its date of composition is debated and generally placed between the second century BCE and the second century CE; the tradition's own dating of the event to the start of Kali Yuga is a separate claim and is stated here as the tradition's.
Krishna himself names Margashirsha in the tenth chapter — masanam margashirsho'ham, 'among months I am Margashirsha' — which is the internal warrant for placing the observance in this month.
Why it matters
It is the only major festival in the calendar whose object is a text rather than a person or an event, and the observance is correspondingly plain: it is read.
Mokshada Ekadashi's own vrat is for the release of ancestors, and the two observances are kept together — the fast for the dead, the reading for the living.
How to celebrate
- Read the Gita through, or hear it readThe observance is the reading; eighteen chapters in one sitting is the traditional form.
- Keep the Ekadashi fastMokshada Ekadashi's rules are the standard ones.
- Read the eleventh chapter aloud if you read only oneThe Vishvarupa darshana; it is the one usually chosen where the whole cannot be done.
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 take rice or grain on the EkadashiThe standard prohibition.
- Do not pluck Tulsi leaves todayForbidden on Ekadashi in the Padma Purana.
- Do not treat the traditional dating as a historical oneThe tradition places the event at the start of Kali Yuga; scholarship places the text's composition much later. Both positions are given here.
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.
- Mahabharata, Bhishma Parva 23–40, the Bhagavad Gita itself.
- Bhagavad Gita 10.35, naming Margashirsha among the months.
- Padma Purana, for the Mokshada Ekadashi vrat.
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