Holika Dahan 2028: Date, Puja Muhurat & Significance

Holika Dahan: 6:27 PM to 8:52 PM (New Delhi).

These times are worked out from local sunrise and sunset, so they shift by city. Choose your city for your own times.

Purnima runs 10 Mar, 10:21 → 11 Mar, 06:36.

1. Check the time. Holika Dahan is done after sunset on the Purnima evening, outside Bhadra; this page's muhurat section gives the window for your city.
2. Build the pyre. Families gather wood and cow-dung cakes at a common spot; a pole is set at the centre to stand for Prahlada.
3. Puja of the pyre. Offer roli, akshat, flowers, raw cotton thread, turmeric, moong and a coconut; wind the thread around the pyre three or seven times.
4. Kindle the fire. Light the pyre at the muhurat, remembering Prahlada's devotion and Holika's end.
5. Parikrama and offerings. Walk around the fire and offer new wheat or barley ears and coconut into it; the roasted grain is taken as prasad.
6. Carry home the embers. Some take a little ash or ember home, for protection and to light the hearth.

• Wood and cow-dung cakes
• Roli, akshat and turmeric
• Raw cotton thread
• Flowers and a coconut
• Whole moong
• New wheat or barley ears
• A water pot (lota)

Through the preceding weeks the neighbourhood gathers wood, dry branches and combustible odds and ends at a chosen spot. On the night, the pile is worshipped with roli, rice, flowers, a sacred thread wound round it, water, and offerings of coconut, gram, wheat ears and the season's first grain; people circumambulate it three or seven times.

When it is lit, the new barley and gram are roasted in the embers and eaten, a first-harvest offering, and ash from the fire is smeared on the forehead the next morning as a protection. The colour-play of Holi begins the following day (Dhulandi / Rangwali Holi).

King Hiranyakashipu, granted near-invulnerability, demanded worship as a god; his son Prahlada would worship only Vishnu. After every attempt to kill the boy failed, the king sent his sister Holika, who had a boon against fire, to sit in a pyre with Prahlada in her lap. The fire took Holika and left Prahlada untouched: devotion protected, cruelty consumed. Vishnu came soon after as Narasimha to end Hiranyakashipu himself.

Source: Bhagavata Purana: Prahlada and Holika; Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa: Holikotsava

The Prahlada–Holika story is in the Bhagavata and Vishnu Puranas; Holikotsava is named in Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa and in inscriptions and poetry from the early centuries CE, making the spring fire-festival one of the oldest attested in India.

• Bhagavata Purana: Prahlada and Holika; Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa: Holikotsava
• Wikipedia: Holika Dahan

1. Over the days before, wood and cow-dung cakes are gathered at a crossroads or open ground, with a pole at the centre for Prahlada.
2. In the evening the pyre is worshipped with water, roli, raw cotton thread wound round it, and new grain; it is lit at the muhurat, outside Bhadra.
3. People circle the fire, roast ears of new wheat or barley in it, and take home the ash, which is applied as tilak the next morning before Holi's colours.

• North and Central India. The community bonfire after moonrise, its worship and parikrama, roasting of new grain, and ash taken the next morning.
• Braj (Barsana, Nandgaon, Phalen). Elaborate Holika rites; at Phalen a priest is said to walk through the fire unharmed.

• Roasted new grain — Wheat or barley ears roasted in the fire and eaten as prasad.
• Gujiya — The Holi sweet, made in the days before and first offered at the fire.

Holika Dahan is kept on the day when Purnima of Phalguna Shukla paksha prevails during Pradosh (the window just after sunset). That day is Friday, 10 March 2028, and the Holika Dahan muhurat is from 6:27 PM to 8:52 PM. Purnima holds during Pradosh only on this day.

during Pradosh (the window just after sunset)

Holika Dahan is the night of Phalguna Purnima: the full moon of Phalguna, in February or March. The bonfire is lit in the Pradosh period after moonrise, avoiding the Bhadra karana if it falls in the early night; Holi (Rangwali) is the next day.

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