Gudi Padwa Festival The first day of Chaitra, the Marathi new year and the turn of the Shalivahana Shaka.
The name
The same day, written in each of the six scripts this app keeps
- English
- Gudi Padwa
- हिन्दी
- गुड़ी पड़वा
- मराठी
- गुढीपाडवा
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.
UTC+5:30
The date of a festival depends on the place: a tithi that ends at dusk in Chennai can still be running at dusk a thousand kilometres west, which moves the day. Sunrise and sunset here are computed for the place above.
When it falls next
Looking for the calendar this day belongs to
This day does not fall again in the next three years at this place. A few days are tied to the solar month rather than to the civil year, so a year can hold two of them or none.
What the day is
The first day of Chaitra, the Marathi new year and the turn of the Shalivahana Shaka. A gudi is raised at the door or over the window in the morning: a bamboo pole with a bright green or yellow cloth tied at the top, a garland of neem and mango leaves, a string of sugar crystals and an inverted brass or silver pot above it all, and it is taken down before sunset. It is one of the saade teen muhurta, the three and a half days of the Marathi year on which anything may be begun without asking the almanac for an hour.
- Deity
- Brahma, Vishnu
- Kind
- Festival Days of celebration: the house is decorated, a feast is cooked and the temple is visited.
The hour
The rule in words
Chaitra shuddha Pratipada at sunrise; when the tithi begins and ends between two sunrises the day it ran on is taken. The gudi goes up in the morning and comes down before dusk.
The fast
No fast is kept. Neem leaves pounded with jaggery, gram dal and a little tamarind are eaten first, for a year taken whole, and puran poli and shrikhand follow.
Where the regions differ
The same tithi is Ugadi in the Deccan, Navreh in Kashmir, Cheti Chand for the Sindhis and the Vikram Samvat new year in the north. Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bengal, Assam and Nepal keep a solar new year a fortnight later instead.
Fixing a day for it
The muhurtham rules that go with this festival
Buying gold or jewellery. Poosam is the star for buying gold, and Akshaya Tritiya (Vaishakha Shukla Thritiyai) and Dhanteras (Krishna Trayodasi before Deepavali) are the two days the whole country buys on, whatever else the day carries. No lagna rule is applied here, so the day is graded as a whole.
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.