Nag Panchami 2028: Date, Rituals & Significance

Shukla Panchami runs 25 Jul, 19:42 → 26 Jul, 16:46.

The Nagas are an ancient class of semi-divine beings — guardians of water, treasure and the underworld, the ornaments and the bed of Shiva and Vishnu — and Nag Panchami is their yearly worship.

It is as practical as it is devotional. The monsoon drives snakes from flooded burrows toward houses and fields; the festival, with its plea that the Nagas spare the household and its cattle, sits exactly there.

In jyotish the Nagas are read through Rahu and Ketu and are linked to the pitrs, so the day is used for the abhishek, the silver-naga offering and the daan that the shastra prescribes to ease Sarpa Dosha, Kaal Sarpa Dosha and a naga-shaap read in a chart.

Regional forms diverge: Manasa Devi, the snake-goddess, is worshipped through Shravana in Bengal, Assam and Odisha; the Nagas of the family sarpa-kavu (serpent grove) are propitiated in Kerala; the historic live-cobra procession of Battis Shirala in Maharashtra has been curtailed for conservation.

The charter story is from the Mahabharata. King Janamejaya, to avenge his father Parikshit — killed by the serpent Takshaka — began a sarpa-satra, a sacrifice meant to draw every snake into the fire and end the race. Astika, a young brahmana whose mother was the Naga Manasa, came to the sacrifice on the Shravana Shukla Panchami and, by his learning and a granted boon, made the king stop it. The surviving serpents kept that day as their thanksgiving.

A second strand is Krishna's subduing of Kaliya, the many-hooded serpent poisoning a bend of the Yamuna at Vrindavan. Krishna danced on his hoods until Kaliya yielded, and spared him at the plea of the Naga's wives on condition that he leave for Ramanaka Dvipa; the Kaliya-mardan is remembered on the day.

A folk vrat-katha tells of a farmer whose plough killed a clutch of young snakes; the mother snake killed his family in revenge but spared a daughter found worshipping the Nagas, and, moved by her devotion, restored the others.

Source: Mahabharata, Adi Parva (the Astika episode and the sarpa-satra); Bhagavata Purana (Kaliya-mardan); regional vrat-katha

Naga worship is among the oldest continuous cults of the subcontinent — Naga stones and serpent-hero shrines are widespread and pre-Puranic — and the Astika story gives the festival its mythic charter.

The Manasa Mangal poems of medieval Bengal, the Sheshanaga iconography of the Vishnu temples, and the Kerala sarpa-kavu — the sacred serpent groves of ancestral homes, with the Mannarasala and Vettikkode temples at their centre — are long-standing regional forms.

The handling of wild cobras at Battis Shirala, once the festival's most famous feature, has been restricted since the mid-2000s under wildlife-protection law; the festival continues there without the capture of snakes.

• Mahabharata, Adi Parva — the Astika-parva and the sarpa-satra
• Manasa Mangal Kavya of medieval Bengal — the Behula–Lakhindar narrative
• Kerala's sarpa-kavu tradition and the Mannarasala temple

1. The house is cleaned and images of snakes are drawn with cow-dung, turmeric or sandal paste at the threshold and beside the door.
2. Milk, water, rice, durva, flowers and lamps are offered to the images, to Naga stones under trees, to anthills and snake holes, and at Naga and Shiva temples; the Nag Panchami katha is heard.
3. In many families nothing is dug, ploughed, cut with a blade, or fried on the day, out of care not to harm a snake.
4. Those with Sarpa or Kaal Sarpa Dosha do a special abhishek, offer a silver or metal naga, and give rice, sesame and a naga image in daan.

• North and West India. Threshold snake images, milk at anthills, the vrat-katha, and the avoidance of frying, cutting and digging for the day.
• Maharashtra. The historic Battis Shirala procession, now without wild snakes; women visit their natal homes, and swings (jhula) are put up in Shravana.
• Bengal, Assam, Odisha. Manasa Devi puja through Shravana, with the Manasa Mangal and the story of Behula and Lakhindar; a jhaap or ghat of the goddess in the home.
• Kerala and coastal Karnataka. Worship at the family sarpa-kavu and at the Mannarasala and Vettikkode temples; tender-coconut and turmeric abhishek of the Naga stones.
• Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Nagula Panchami, and the related Nagula Chavithi in Kartika, with offerings of milk, eggs and flour cakes at anthills.

• No frying or tava-cooking — In many homes the griddle is not lit; food is steamed or boiled for the day as a mark of ahimsa toward snakes.
• Milk-based sweets and kheer — Offered to the Nagas and shared; milk is the emblematic offering of the day.
• Dind, patoli, or a plain menu — Steamed rice-flour parcels in Maharashtra and the Konkan; otherwise a simple meal.

Nag Panchami is kept on the day when Panchami of Shravana Shukla paksha prevails at sunrise. That day is Wednesday, 26 July 2028. Panchami holds at sunrise only on this day.

at sunrise

Nag Panchami is the Shukla Panchami of Shravana — the fifth tithi of the waxing fortnight (some regions keep the Krishna Panchami), when the Moon is a thin-to-quarter waxing crescent 48°–60° ahead of the Sun (sidereal Lahiri). It falls at the height of the monsoon, when snakes are displaced from flooded burrows and most often meet people. In jyotish the Nagas belong to the Rahu–Ketu axis, so the day is chosen for the remedies of Sarpa and Kaal Sarpa Dosha. The Sun stands in sidereal Karka. The Gregorian date drifts about 11 days earlier each year and jumps back ~19 days in an adhika-month year.

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