Chhath Puja

What Chhath Puja is

Chhath is the vrat kept for Surya and for Chhathi Maiya on Kartik Shukla Shashthi — chhath simply means “the sixth”, the sixth tithi of the bright fortnight of Kartik. It belongs first to Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh and to the Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magahi-speaking world, and it has travelled with that world to Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Nepal, Mauritius and the Gulf. Wherever it goes it keeps the same shape: standing water, a bamboo soop, and two arghyas given twelve hours apart.

Two things make it unlike almost every other Hindu festival. First, there is no idol, no priest and no temple — the vrati stands in the river or pond herself, faces the Sun, and offers directly; there is no intermediary in Chhath at all. Second, it is the one major festival in which the setting Sun is worshipped before the rising one, and the sandhya arghya to a Sun that is going down is treated as no lesser than the arghya to the Sun that is coming up.

The person keeping the fast is called the vrati, or in many households the parvaitin. It is most often a woman — a mother, most commonly, keeping it for her children and the family — but men keep Chhath too, in growing numbers, and a household that has once begun the vrat generally continues it year after year, passing it down when the elder can no longer stand in the water. That continuity is why families will travel a thousand kilometres home for four days in November.

There is a second, smaller Chhath in the month of Chaitra (March–April), kept the same way and called Chaiti Chhath. The Kartik one is the large public festival and is what people mean by “Chhath” without qualifying it.

Chhathi Maiya, and the stories behind the vrat

Chhathi Maiya is the deity of childhood and of the sixth day — the same sixth day after a birth on which many families in this belt still hold the chhathi ceremony for a newborn. She is spoken of as the sister of Surya, which is why one vrat serves both: the arghya goes to the Sun, the prayer goes to her, and what is asked for is almost always the health and long life of children. Anyone who has stood at a ghat has heard it in the songs — the folk repertoire of Chhath is enormous, sung by women without instruments, and it is closer to the heart of the festival than any written text.

Several stories are told to explain how the vrat began, and households differ over which one they tell. In one, Draupadi and the Pandavas keep it during their exile and recover what they had lost. In another it is Karna, born of Surya, who stands waist-deep in water every day offering arghya to his father — the image that the ghat itself reproduces. A third traces it to Sita on her return from Lanka, and a fourth to a childless royal couple who receive a son through the grace of Chhathi Maiya. They are told as tradition, not as chapter and verse, and nothing in the observance depends on which one your family keeps.

What every version agrees on is the tone. Chhath is not a festival of asking for wealth. It is a festival of thanks to the one visible source of life that nobody has to be taught to recognise, kept with a discipline — clean water, uncooked-by-outside-hands food, bare feet, no leftovers, no impurity in the kitchen — that most families take more seriously than any other observance in their year.

The four days of Chhath 2026

Chhath is built as four days in a fixed order, and each has its own name, its own food and its own job. Only the third day carries the famous evening arghya; the fourth day, at sunrise, is when the vrat actually ends.

Tithis are counted from sunrise, not from midnight, and a tithi can be doubled or dropped — in some years the calendar dates shift by a day even though the order of the four days never changes. Confirm Shashthi and the sunrise and sunset for your own city on the panchang before fixing anything; both arghyas are timed to the Sun, not to the clock.

The arghya vidhi, step by step

The vidhi below is the shape kept in most households along the Bihar and eastern UP belt. Families differ in detail — what goes on the soop, whether kosi is lit at the ghat or at home, whether the vrati keeps silence — and the local practice of your own family is the one to follow.

1. 1

   Prepare the prasad yourself

   Thekua, kasar (rice-flour laddu) and puri are made at home on the third day, on a mud chulha or a stove kept only for this, with wheat flour that many families still get ground specially and guard from birds and from any stray touch. Nobody who has not bathed enters the kitchen; nothing is tasted while it is being made.

2. 2

   Load the daura and the soop

   Everything is carried in a bamboo daura (basket) — never a plastic or steel one in traditional households — and offered from a bamboo soop (winnow). Thekua, fruit, sugarcane, coconut, whole turmeric and ginger with their leaves, radish, sweet potato and suthni go in, with a clay diya, sindoor and the kalash of water. Some families use a brass soop; both are accepted.

3. 3

   Walk to the ghat barefoot

   The family walks to the river, pond or ghat barefoot, the daura carried on the head and not set down on the way. Reach with time in hand: the arghya is given to the Sun as it goes down, so arriving after it has gone is arriving late. Check the sunset for your own city on the panchang the same morning.

4. 4

   Stand in the water and offer

   The vrati enters the water — knee- to waist-deep is usual — faces the setting Sun, raises the loaded soop in both hands, and offers water from the kalash in a slow stream while the family calls out the prayer. The offering is repeated, commonly three times or as many as the family’s custom holds, and milk is poured with the water in many households.

5. 5

   Kosi bharai

   In many families — especially where a wish has been fulfilled, a child born or a marriage completed — a kosi is made: sugarcane stalks tied into a canopy over a set of clay elephant-lamps and diyas, lit at the ghat or in the courtyard on the night between the two arghyas. It is a vow being paid, not a step everyone has to perform.

6. 6

   Return for Usha Arghya

   Go back to the same ghat before dawn — many families stay the night. The vrati stands in the water again, now facing east, and offers to the Sun as it rises. Reach before first light; the whole point is that the offering is made to the Sun as it appears, and sunrise moves by city and by date.

7. 7

   Parana and distribution

   After the second arghya the vrati takes the parana — a piece of raw ginger and a sip of water or sharbat in the common practice, then the prasad. Thekua, fruit and pieces of sugarcane are given to everyone at the ghat, including strangers; nothing of the Chhath prasad is turned away, and none of it is wasted.

We do not print arghya times here on purpose. Sunset and sunrise differ by hundreds of kilometres of longitude — Patna, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are all several minutes to nearly an hour apart — and a time copied from another city is the one mistake that cannot be repaired on the day. Look up your own city on the panchang.

What goes in the daura and the soop — and why

Almost everything offered at Chhath is a whole thing grown in the ground and ripening in exactly this season — nothing cut small, nothing processed, nothing bought cooked. The list below is the common one; families add what their own soil grows and their own elders kept.

Nothing on the soop is tasted before it is offered, and nothing is bought ready-made in a strict household. If you are keeping Chhath away from home, the honest substitution is to make less, not to buy it — the rule that matters is that the prasad is made by the vrati’s own household.

The vrat: what is eaten, what is avoided

The Chhath vrat is one of the hardest kept anywhere in the Hindu calendar, because the central fast is nirjala — without water — and runs from the Kharna meal on the second evening to the parana after Usha Arghya on the fourth morning, roughly thirty-six hours, with a night at the ghat in the middle of it.

• Nahay-Khay meal: arwa (unpolished) rice, chana dal and lauki, cooked in sendha namak, with pure ghee. No onion, no garlic, no ordinary salt, nothing from outside the house.
• Kharna prasad: kheer of gud and arwa rice, with roti or puri, taken once after sunset — traditionally on a mud chulha, and in many households in silence.
• Through the nirjala fast: nothing at all, not even water, until the parana. The vrati does not lie on a bed in many families, sleeping on the floor instead, and does not wear stitched footwear until the vrat is over.
• Salt, sugar and grain discipline: sendha namak in place of ordinary salt, gud in place of refined sugar, arwa rice in place of usnaa (parboiled) rice — these three substitutions run through every Chhath kitchen.
• Set aside for all four days by the household, not only the vrati: onion, garlic, non-vegetarian food, eggs, alcohol, and any food cooked outside. Beds and bedding are washed, and the puja room and kitchen are entered only after a bath.
• Who should not attempt the full nirjala fast: pregnant and nursing women, children, the elderly, anyone diabetic, on regular medication or with a heart or kidney condition. Tradition itself makes this exemption, and a household commonly appoints another member to keep the vrat that year. Standing in cold water before dawn is the part to be most careful about.

If the vrat has to be broken for health, it is broken — tradition treats a body damaged by a vrat as no offering at all. The usual course is to complete the puja without the nirjala part and to hand the fast to another member of the family for that year.

Chhath in Jyotish: Surya, the two sandhis, and a weak Sun

No other festival in the year is addressed so completely to a single graha. In Jyotish, Surya is the karaka of health and vitality, of authority and position, of the bones and the eyes, of the atma or core self — and of the father. Read the list of what people actually ask for at the ghat and it is the same list: strength for the children, a job or a promotion for the husband, recovery for someone ill, the family’s standing restored. Chhath is a Surya upaya performed by an entire region at once.

The two arghyas are not an accident of convenience either. Sunset and sunrise are the two sandhis of the day — the junctions where night turns to day and day to night — and the classical texts treat every sandhi as a moment of heightened effect, which is why sandhya vandan, the twilight prayer, is the oldest daily discipline in the tradition. Chhath takes the two sandhis of one full turn of the Earth and puts an offering at each end.

Offering to the setting Sun first is the part outsiders find strange, and it is the part the tradition is proudest of. The Sun that is going down is the Sun in decline, and the belt that keeps Chhath honours it before it honours the Sun that is rising — a deliberate refusal of the habit of only saluting what is ascending. Jyotish makes the same point differently: the Sun in a chart is not judged only by its exaltation. A Sun that is debilitated, combust-adjacent or afflicted is still your atma, and it is the one you have to work with.

In the chart, Surya’s own ground is the 1st house (the self and the body), the 9th (the father, dharma, fortune) and the 10th (position, authority, career) — and it owns Simha (Leo). When a Sun sits weak, debilitated in Tula, closely afflicted, or in a house where it struggles, the classical remedies are exactly what Chhath already does at scale: water offered to the rising Sun, Sunday observance, the Aditya Hridaya Stotra or the Gayatri, red and copper, jaggery and wheat given away, and respect shown to the father. Chhath is that upaya turned into a festival — which is why families who never look at a chart still feel it working.

• Sunset and sunrise are the whole festival, and both move with your longitude and latitude — a time printed for Patna is wrong for Delhi and badly wrong for Mumbai. Take both arghya timings from the panchang for your own city, on the day.
• Which house your own Sun occupies, and whether it is strong, decides how much a Surya vrat is doing for you specifically. A free janam kundli shows the Sun’s sign, house and dignity in a minute.
• If your running dasha or antardasha is Surya’s, this is the year to keep the vrat with attention — the graha whose period is running is the one a remedy reaches most directly.
• Difficulty with the father, with authority, with seniors at work, or a long dip in vitality are the classic signatures people bring to a Sun reading — and the classic reasons a household begins Chhath in the first place.

This is the tradition’s general position on Surya, not a reading of your chart. What your own Sun needs — and whether it needs anything — depends on its sign, house, dignity, aspects and running dasha, which only a chart can show. A festival page can tell you what the vrat is for; it cannot tell you what yours is doing.

How Chhath is kept, from the ghats to a rooftop

• Bihar — the Ganga ghats of Patna, the Punpun, the Sone and every village pond. Whole towns close, ghats are cleaned and lit by the community weeks in advance, and the night between the two arghyas is spent at the water in song.
• Eastern Uttar Pradesh — Varanasi, Ballia, Gorakhpur, Deoria and the Purvanchal belt keep it on the Ganga, the Ghaghara and the Rapti, with the same four days and only small differences in the prasad.
• Jharkhand and the Mithila region — Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Darbhanga, Madhubani; in Maithil households the songs and the terms shift (parvaitin, daura, kosi), and the kosi bharai is often the most elaborate part.
• Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Surat, Ludhiana — artificial ghats built by the municipality or by community groups on the Yamuna, at lakes, on beaches and in park tanks. Chhath in these cities is now among the largest public gatherings of the year.
• Nepal’s Terai — Janakpur, Birgunj and the Mithila districts keep Chhath as a national-scale festival, in the same form and with the same songs.
• Away from any river — a clean tank, a tub or a large vessel on a terrace is accepted in many families when no water body is reachable. The rule people keep is that the water is clean, still, and stood in; the ghat is a place, the vrat is not.

Do's and don'ts through the four days

• Do clean the house and the kitchen completely before Nahay-Khay, and keep separate vessels for the prasad that nothing else is cooked in.
• Do go to the ghat with time to spare and check your city’s sunset and sunrise the same day — the crowd, the walk and the barefoot approach all take longer than people expect.
• Do give the prasad to whoever asks, including people you do not know. Refusing Chhath prasad or letting it go to waste is held to be a serious lapse.
• Don't taste anything while the prasad is being made, and don't let anyone into the kitchen who has not bathed — this is the strictest rule of the four days in most households.
• Don't wear leather or stitched footwear during the vrat, and don't carry the daura in a plastic or steel container where the bamboo one is the custom.
• Don't leave anything behind at the ghat — clay lamps, leaves and fruit are fine, but plastic, thermocol and packaging are not. Many ghat committees now run a cleaning drive right after Usha Arghya; joining it is part of the observance for a growing number of families.
• Don't push the fast past what the body can take, especially standing in cold water before dawn. Tradition allows the vrat to be shortened or handed over; it does not ask for a hospital visit.

Keeping Chhath if you are new to it, or far from home

Chhath has no gate on it. Nothing in the vrat restricts it by caste, by region or by who your grandparents were — there is no priest to admit you and no ceremony of initiation. Households outside the Bhojpuri-Maithili world do keep it, usually after a wish was fulfilled or simply out of the pull of having stood at a ghat once. What is asked of a newcomer is only what is asked of everyone: cleanliness, prasad made at home, and the vrat kept as it was undertaken.

Two cautions that matter more than any other advice. First, once a household begins Chhath the tradition expects it to continue year after year, and to be passed on rather than dropped — so begin it as a commitment, not as an experiment. Second, do not start with the full nirjala fast if your body has never done anything like it; keeping the four days, the prasad and the arghya while taking water is a real and accepted way to hold the vrat, and many first-year vratis do exactly that.

If you are in a city with no river, look for the community ghat before you improvise — most large cities now have several, run by Bihar and Purvanchal associations, with the water tested and the ghat lit. Where there is none, a clean tank or a large vessel on a terrace is what families use, and the arghya is offered from it in exactly the same way.

Frequently asked questions