Bail Pola 2028: Date, Rituals & Significance

Amavasya runs 19 Aug, 19:47 → 20 Aug, 16:14.

For at least a day before, the bullocks are not worked. On Pola they are bathed in the river, oiled, their horns coloured and tipped with brass, decked in new nose-ropes, bells, ghungroos and embroidered jhools; the farmer does their aarti and feeds them puran poli and gram. They are then walked to a village gathering, made to break a torana of mango leaves, and raced or paraded. Children are given painted wooden bulls (Tanha Pola / Moti Pola) to worship.

One story tells that Krishna, as a boy, killed the bull-demon Polasura on this day, so it bears his name; another simply gives the farming community a day to repay the oxen for a year of labour before the harvest work begins. It falls the day after Pithori Amavasya's mother-and-child rites, and often near Hartalika and Ganesh Chaturthi.

Source: Regional / sectarian festival tradition and the sources named in the text

Pola is an agrarian cattle festival of the Deccan and central India described in regional ethnography; the wooden-bull custom for children and the village bullock parades are its long-standing features, and it is a holiday in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.

• Wikipedia

1. On Shravana Amavasya, Maharashtra's farmers honour the bullocks that plough their fields; the animals are rested for the day.
2. They are bathed, their horns painted and capped, and dressed with embroidered jhool, bells and garlands, then worshipped and fed puran poli.
3. In the evening the decorated bullocks are paraded around the village to music; in Vidarbha children bring wooden bulls the next day for Tanha Pola.

• Vidarbha, Marathwada, Western Maharashtra. Bullocks bathed, decorated and paraded; the mango-leaf torana broken; puran poli fed.
• Chhattisgarh, MP, Telangana. Pola with clay or wooden bulls (Nandi bail) worshipped by children; Tanha Pola for the little ones.

• Puran poli — Fed to the bullocks first and then eaten by the family.

Bail Pola is kept on the day when Amavasya of Bhadrapada Krishna paksha prevails at sunrise. That day is Sunday, 20 August 2028. Amavasya holds at sunrise only on this day.

at sunrise

Bail Pola falls on Shravana Amavasya by the amanta reckoning of Maharashtra (Pithori Amavasya), in late August or September. The bullock worship is done in the afternoon and the parade at dusk.

A lunar date: Amavasya of the dark half of Bhadrapada drifts about 11 days earlier each solar year, then jumps back ~19 days when a leap (Adhika) month is inserted.