Vrishabha Sankranti 2028: Date, Rituals & Significance

Krishna Shashthi runs 13 May, 23:09 → 15 May, 00:50.

Vrishabha Sankranti has little bespoke festival around it; its weight is calendrical — it opens Vaikasi, the month of Vaikasi Visakam (the star-day of Murugan) in the Tamil country, and it is a recognised day for sesame-and-water dana and for shraddha where a death anniversary falls by the solar month.

Like the other minor Sankrantis, Vrishabha Sankranti is defined only by the Surya Siddhanta reckoning of the solar month; regional almanacs list it for the punya kala and for fixing the solar-month shraddha.

Source: Surya Siddhanta — the solar months

The solar months and their Sankrantis are set out in the Surya Siddhanta and codified in the regional panchangas; Vaikasi Visakam as Murugan's birth-star day is an old Tamil temple observance, prominent at Tiruchendur and Palani.

• Surya Siddhanta — the solar months
• Wikipedia — Sankranti

1. The Sun enters Taurus, the sign of the bull, in mid-May; the day is kept with a bath and daan in the punya kaal.
2. Because Vrishabha is Nandi's sign, Shiva is worshipped, and the gift of a cow is held especially meritorious.
3. In the heat of Jyeshtha, water, curd and cooling foods are given to the poor and to travellers.

• Odisha. Brusha Sankranti — a bathing-and-dana parva; some keep a partial fast.
• Tamil Nadu. The first of Vaikasi, the month of Vaikasi Visakam sacred to Murugan.

• Curd rice and buttermilk — Cooling food given in daan and eaten in the May heat.

Vrishabha Sankranti falls on Sunday, 14 May 2028. Sun's sidereal ingress into Taurus (Vrishabha).

at sunrise

Vrishabha Sankranti is the moment the Sun enters sidereal Taurus (Lahiri), near 15 May. Being sidereal, the date is almost fixed in the Gregorian calendar, moving about a day later 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).