Sarhul Festival Sarhul is the spring festival of the Sarna faith and it is not a Hindu festival; it stands on this calendar as a neighbour's day, because Jharkhand stops for it.

English

Sarhul

हिन्दी

सरहुल

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. Friday, 9 April 2027
2. Wednesday, 29 March 2028
3. Tuesday, 17 April 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.

Sarhul is the spring festival of the Sarna faith and it is not a Hindu festival; it stands on this calendar as a neighbour's day, because Jharkhand stops for it. Its occasion is the flowering of the sal, and the pahan, the village priest, fasts for three days and then honours Dharti Aayo in the sarna sthal, the grove the village has never cut. He sets three earthen pots of water the night before and reads the water left in them in the morning for how the rains will come, and the sal flowers are then carried from the grove to every house and put above the door and in the women's hair. The Munda call the day Ba Parab, the flower festival, the Oraon call it Khaddi and the Ho call it Ba; the handia is shared, the mandar is beaten, and the Ranchi jatra goes from Siram Toli through the city.

Deity

Dharti Aayo, Sarna Burhia, Singbonga, Dharmes

Kind

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

Chaitra Shukla Tritiya at sunrise, which is the date the Jharkhand gazette fixes the holiday on and the date the Ranchi jatra keeps. In the villages the pahan keeps it when he finds the sal in flower, which is not a tithi and can sit days either side of this date.

Sunrise 06:00, sunset 18:21, 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.

The pahan fasts for three days before it and the village does not, and no sal flower is picked and no new leaf eaten before he has honoured the grove. The handia, the rice beer, is the drink of the day and is offered before it is drunk.

Jharkhand keeps it as a state holiday, and the Munda, Oraon, Ho and Kharia of Odisha, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Assam keep it with them. The Santhal spring festival is Baha, a different day in Phalguna kept when the naeke finds the flower, so the two should not be read as one.

The dates above are the Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh 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.

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.