Puthandu 2028: Date, Rituals & Significance

Krishna Chaturthi runs 12 Apr, 08:36 → 13 Apr, 07:29.

Homes are washed and floored with kolam; the doorway is hung with mango leaves and the family wears new clothes and visits the temple. The festive meal centres on maanga pachadi — a dish of raw mango, jaggery, neem flower and chilli that carries all the tastes of the year to come, sweet and bitter together.

The Chithirai month opens the great Madurai Chithirai Thiruvizha — the celestial wedding of Meenakshi and Sundareswarar and Kallazhagar's river crossing — which falls later in the same month; the Kanchipuram and Tiruvidaimarudur temple cars also run in Chithirai.

The Tamil solar calendar counts Chithirai as its first month, a scheme shared with the other South Indian solar reckonings; the sixty-year Jovian cycle (Prabhava to Akshaya) names each year. The kani custom mirrors Kerala's Vishukkani, and the maanga pachadi encodes a wish that the year be met with equanimity, whatever its flavours.

Source: Tamil temple almanacs and the Kanchi matha — the Chithirai new year

A 2008 Tamil Nadu law briefly moved the state's official new year to Thai (mid-January, with Pongal); it was repealed in 2011 and Chithirai 1 restored. The traditional date is upheld by the Kanchi and Sringeri mathas and by the temple almanacs.

• Tamil temple almanacs and the Kanchi matha — the Chithirai new year
• Wikipedia — Puthandu

1. On the eve a tray is arranged with the three fruits (mango, jackfruit and banana), betel leaves, gold, coins, flowers and a mirror, so that it is the first thing seen on waking.
2. After an oil bath and new clothes, a kolam is drawn at the entrance and the family prays at home and visits the temple; many temples hold a panchanga padanam, a reading of the new year's almanac.
3. The first meal includes mango pachadi, whose six tastes stand for the mixed experiences of the coming year; in Madurai the Chithirai festival season is under way.

• Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The kani sight on waking, the panchanga padippu reading, kolam, mango-leaf toran, temple visits and maanga pachadi.
• Sri Lanka. Aluth Avurudu — the Sinhala and Tamil New Year kept together in mid-April, with the hearth lit and transactions begun at astrologically fixed times (nekath).

• Mango pachadi — Raw mango with jaggery, neem flowers, tamarind, chilli and salt: every taste of the year in one dish.
• Vadai and payasam — Lentil fritters and a milk or jaggery pudding for the festive lunch.
• A full virundhu — The festive meal on a banana leaf with sambar, rasam, poriyal and kootu.

Puthandu falls on Thursday, 13 April 2028. Tamil New Year; same solar event as Mesha Sankranti.

at sunrise

Puthandu falls on Mesha Sankranti — the Sun's entry into sidereal Aries (Lahiri) — which the Tamil calendar takes by the sunrise rule, placing it on 14 April almost every year. The sidereal date drifts about a day per seventy years.

Fixed to a solar ingress — the Gregorian date barely moves (a day either way as the ingress instant drifts against the civil day).