Kaveri Sankramana · Cauvery Theerthodbhava Festival The holiest day of the Kodava year, kept on the day the Sun enters Tula.

English

Kaveri Sankramana · Cauvery Theerthodbhava

ಕನ್ನಡ

ಕಾವೇರಿ ಸಂಕ್ರಮಣ

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. Saturday, 17 October 2026
2. Monday, 18 October 2027
3. Tuesday, 17 October 2028

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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 holiest day of the Kodava year, kept on the day the Sun enters Tula. At Talakaveri on Brahmagiri, where the Kaveri rises in a tank the size of a room, the spring in the Brahma kundike is held to well up at the sankramana instant itself, and the hour is published weeks in advance so that the hillside is full before it. The water taken at that moment is theertha: it is carried home in a bottle, it stands in the house through the year, and a spoon of it is put in the mouth of someone who is dying. In the Kodava house the goddess is received that morning in the central hall as the Kanni, dressed in red silk with glass bangles and the household gold, and the family worships her itself, with no priest called and no mantra said. The day is kept vegetarian, which in a house whose festival food is pork is the whole statement.

Deity

Kaveri, Igguthappa

Kind

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

The civil day the Sun enters Tula, sign 7, read in Indian Standard Time, which is 17 or 18 October. The theerthodbhava is at the sankramana instant itself and its hour is published in advance, so the day is taken from the instant and not from a month rule. The bathing at the Bhagamandala sangama, where the Kaveri, the Kannike and the Sujyoti meet, runs from this day to the end of the month of Tula.

This day carries no instant that can be put on a clock: it is fixed by the tithi or the nakshatra running at sunrise, or by a moonrise the app does not compute. The rule above is the whole of it.

The family eats nothing until the Kanni has been worshipped, and then eats a vegetarian meal. No meat and no fish come into the house that day, and in a Kodava house that is the observance.

Kodagu alone keeps the Kaveri as its own mother rather than as a river visited on pilgrimage, and the theertha of some year stands in almost every Kodava house. Tamil Nadu reads the same ingress as Aippasi 1 and opens the Tula snanam at the delta ghats on it, and Kerala reads it as Thulam 1.

The dates above are the Kodagu 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.

A temple visit, or the first darshan at a new temple. No weekday is ruled out: Tuesday belongs to Murugan and the Amman, Saturday to Perumal and Sani, so the day usually follows the deity rather than the almanac. Ashtami and Chaturdasi are the two tithis held back for darshan, with the standing exceptions of Sivaratri on Krishna Chaturdasi and Kala Bhairava Ashtami, which are kept on those very days. Rahu kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika kaal are not scored here; the panchangam page prints them for the day you pick, and most families simply wait them out.

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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.