Ghughutiya · Kale Kauva · Uttarayani Festival The Kumaoni Makar Sankranti, and a day belonging to children and to crows.

English

Ghughutiya · Kale Kauva · Uttarayani

कुमाउँनी

घुघुतिया · काले कौवा

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. Thursday, 14 January 2027
2. Saturday, 15 January 2028
3. Sunday, 14 January 2029

See the whole year on the calendar →

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 Kumaoni Makar Sankranti, and a day belonging to children and to crows. Wheat flour and jaggery are worked into a dough and cut into shapes, a bird above all, the ghughut, and also pomegranates, drums, knives and swords; they are fried in ghee on the evening before and strung with an orange and a piece of sugarcane into a necklace. At first light the children hang the necklace round their necks, go up on the roof or the courtyard wall and call the crows to come and take it, kale kauva kale, ghughuti mala khale. The crow is the messenger and the ancestor’s bird, and feeding it on the turn of the Sun is the whole rite.

Deity

Surya, Pitrs

Kind

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

The first day of the solar month of Magh, which is the gate day the Sun enters Makara, taken as the civil day that holds the ingress. The ghughute are fried the evening before and the crows are called at first light. The pan-Indian Makar Sankranti reads the same ingress before sunset and can therefore fall the next morning.

Sunrise 06:35, sunset 18:01, 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 ghughute themselves, khichdi, til and gur laddu and the Kumaoni singal are the food of the day, and the crows are fed before anyone in the house eats.

Kumaon keeps the ghughute and the crows, and the Uttarayani mela at Bagnath in Bageshwar, where the Sarju meets the Gomti, opens the same morning and has been a trade fair and since 1923 a political one. Garhwal keeps the day as Makraini with a bath at the Ganga and less of the baking; Himachal keeps the same ingress as Magha Saaji with khichdi and a bath, closer to the Punjab than to Kumaon.

The dates above are the Himachal · Uttarakhand 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.

• Thirupariyalur Veerateswarar Temple 228 km
  Kollumangudi, Mayiladuthurai, Tamil Nadu

  This day is kept for Pitrs, and the gazetteer keeps this temple for Pitru and ancestors. Visited where a family quarrel or a father’s displeasure is read into the chart, and on amavasai for the ancestors.

• Mayuranathaswami Temple, Mayiladuthurai 230 km
  Tamil Nadu

  This day is kept for Pitrs, and the gazetteer keeps this temple for Pitru and ancestors. Tula snanam through Aippasi, when lakhs bathe at the ghats, and amavasai tarpanam are what most come for.

• Papanasanathar Temple, Papanasam 263 km
  Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu

  This day is kept for Pitrs, and the gazetteer keeps this temple for Pitru and ancestors. Amavasai tarpanam and Maha Sivaratri are its days

• Vedaranyeswarar Temple, Vedaranyam 304 km
  Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu

  This day is kept for Pitrs, and the gazetteer keeps this temple for Pitru and ancestors. Amavasai and Aadi Amavasai tarpanam on the nearby shore are what most come for.

• Magudeswarar Temple, Kodumudi 341 km
  Erode, Tamil Nadu

  This day is kept for Pitrs, and the gazetteer keeps this temple for Pitru and ancestors. Maha Sivaratri and amavasai tarpanam are its days.

• Naguleswaram Temple, Keerimalai 364 km
  Jaffna, Northern Province, Sri Lanka

  This day is kept for Pitrs, and the gazetteer keeps this temple for Pitru and ancestors. Aadi Amavasai tarpanam at Keerimalai is the largest ancestor rite in the north of the island.

26 more temples in this gazetteer are recorded for the day. Find temples near you.

A temple is listed here only where the gazetteer's own line names this day, or where this day's own entry names the town, or where the day belongs to the ancestors or the nagas and the temple is recorded for that rite. Where neither table says anything, nothing is listed. Your family's own temple comes first, and its calendar is the one that decides.

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.