How is Sharadiya Navratri begins celebrated?

Install the ghata in the first part of the day and sow the barley — Ghatasthapana has a fixed window; it is not done in the afternoon. Read the Durga Saptashati through the nine days — A chapter a day is the customary division. Keep the fast in whatever form you can sustain for nine days — One meal, phalahar, or grain-free — all are current. Do the kanya pujan on Ashtami or Navami — Young girls fed and honoured; the closing act of the household observance.

What should be avoided on Sharadiya Navratri begins?

Do not install the ghata during Amavasya or before sunrise — The tithi must have begun; the Pratipada rule governs. Do not take meat, alcohol, onion or garlic if you are keeping the nine days — The standard restriction, kept even in households that otherwise do not. Do not leave an akhand jyoti unattended once vowed — The unbroken lamp is a nine-day commitment. Do not immerse a painted or plaster image in an open water body — Kolkata and other cities now provide immersion tanks and lift the frames out; the clay image is the tradition and the frame is not.

शारदीय नवरात्रि

Sharadiya Navratri begins

Q: When is Sharadiya Navratri begins?

The date is computed for your city on this page. Computed from the Moon's elongation from the Sun. The civil day is the one carrying the tithi running at sunrise.

The autumn Navratri — nine nights from the first tithi of bright Ashwin, opening with Ghatasthapana.

Major festival Ghatasthapana

Where it is kept All India: Durga Puja in Bengal, Odisha and Assam; Garba in Gujarat; Golu in Tamil Nadu; Bommala Koluvu in Andhra; Dasara in Karnataka.

When it falls

Computed for

Computing lunar phases…

Computed from the Moon's elongation from the Sun. The civil day is the one carrying the tithi running at sunrise.

Overview

The larger of the two public Navratris, beginning the morning after Sarva Pitru Amavasya. Ghatasthapana installs the pot and sows the barley in the first third of the day, and the nine nights run to Maha Navami, with Vijayadashami on the tenth.

The regional forms are almost separate festivals. Bengal keeps five days of Durga Puja from Shashthi, with the image made at Kumartuli and immersed on Dashami. Gujarat dances garba and dandiya raas around the lamp for nine nights. Tamil Nadu and Andhra arrange the Golu, tiered displays of dolls. Mysore keeps the royal Dasara procession. Each is complete in itself.

Where it comes from

The Devi Mahatmya supplies the theology — Durga's nine-day battle with Mahishasura — and the autumn timing has its own name in the tradition: Akalbodhan, the untimely awakening. Rama is said to have invoked the Goddess out of season, in autumn rather than spring, before the battle with Ravana, and the Bengali observance takes its authority from that.

The Bengali community Durga Puja in its recognisable form dates from the eighteenth century — the barowari, or twelve-friend, subscription puja at Guptipara in 1790 is the usual marker — and the great household pujas of Kolkata from the same period. UNESCO inscribed Kolkata's Durga Puja on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2021.

Why it matters

It is the pivot of the eastern Indian year in the way Ganesh Chaturthi is of Maharashtra's — an economy, an artisan tradition and a civic calendar organised around it.

The nine nights are also the classical season for beginning study, for a child's first letters, and for the worship of tools and books on Navami. The Goddess in this festival is knowledge as much as force.

How to celebrate

Install the ghata in the first part of the day and sow the barleyGhatasthapana has a fixed window; it is not done in the afternoon.
Read the Durga Saptashati through the nine daysA chapter a day is the customary division.
Keep the fast in whatever form you can sustain for nine daysOne meal, phalahar, or grain-free — all are current.
Do the kanya pujan on Ashtami or NavamiYoung girls fed and honoured; the closing act of the household observance.

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 install the ghata during Amavasya or before sunriseThe tithi must have begun; the Pratipada rule governs.
Do not take meat, alcohol, onion or garlic if you are keeping the nine daysThe standard restriction, kept even in households that otherwise do not.
Do not leave an akhand jyoti unattended once vowedThe unbroken lamp is a nine-day commitment.
Do not immerse a painted or plaster image in an open water bodyKolkata and other cities now provide immersion tanks and lift the frames out; the clay image is the tradition and the frame is not.

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, Markandeya Purana 81–93, for the nine forms and the Mahishasura narrative.
Krittivasi Ramayana, for the Akalbodhan — Rama's autumn invocation of the Goddess.
Nirnayasindhu, for the Ghatasthapana window and the tithi rules.
UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Durga Puja in Kolkata, inscribed 2021.

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

Durga Ashtami Maha Navami Dussehra / Vijayadashami Sarva Pitru Amavasya Pitru Paksha begins Anant Chaturdashi

All festivals, with dates for any year · The calendar on the home page