Beneshwar Mela Festival The fair of the Bhil and Garasia households of the Vagad, held on the sandbar where the Som, the Mahi and the Jakham meet in Dungarpur, and called the Kumbh of the tribes because nothing else brings so many of them together.

English

Beneshwar Mela

हिन्दी

बेणेश्वर मेला

राजस्थानी

बेणेश्वर मेला

Only the names actually in use are listed. A blank script is not an omission: the day may simply not be kept there, or be kept under a different festival's name.

1. Wednesday, 17 February 2027
2. Monday, 7 February 2028
3. Friday, 26 January 2029

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Worked out for Chennai, Lahiri ayanamsa. A date is a function of the place: set yours above and the next three come back for where you are.

The fair of the Bhil and Garasia households of the Vagad, held on the sandbar where the Som, the Mahi and the Jakham meet in Dungarpur, and called the Kumbh of the tribes because nothing else brings so many of them together. The Shiva linga at Beneshwar is worshipped with the Vishnu temple that Mavji built beside it, the ashes of the year’s dead are brought to the confluence and given to the water, and the nights are spent in the gavari and the songs. Cattle are traded, marriages are settled, and the Sadhu of the Mavji sect comes down from Sabla with the procession.

Deity

Shiva, Vishnu

Kind

Festival Days of celebration: the house is decorated, a feast is cooked and the temple is visited.

Magha Shukla Ekadashi at sunrise opens it, the tithi the pran pratishtha at Beneshwar was made on, and it runs to the Magha full moon.

Sunrise 06:31, sunset 18:15, UTC+5.5. These are the instants the rule is read at, not the temple's own puja times, which every temple prints for itself.

No fast. The food is cooked at the camps on the sand and shared, and the maize and the bajra of the Vagad are what is eaten.

Rajasthan keeps it as the largest tribal fair in the state, with Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh sending the Bhil households of their own border districts; nothing in the rest of the country answers to it.

The dates above are the Rajasthan reckoning, because that is the calendar this key belongs to. Switch the tradition on the calendar page to see how another one dates the same day.

Yatra, setting out on a journey. The classical rule is by direction: Sukra and the Yogini of the day sit in the direction not to be travelled, and a disagreeable direction is answered with a token journey a day earlier. That is not computed here. The weekday folklore differs from place to place, so only Sevvai and Sani are marked weak. The windows below are the daylight stretches with a movable or dual sign rising, outside Rahu kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika kaal.

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Every date here is computed from the Sun and Moon for the place entered, by the rule printed beside it. A printed panchangam can differ by a day where an almanac reads a tithi at a different instant, and a family's own custom always comes first. Where the practice genuinely varies, the text says so rather than choosing for you.