Datta Jayanti

About Datta Jayanti

Significance

Datta Jayanti celebrates the birth of Bhagavan Dattatreya, the son of the sage Atri and his wife Anasuya, revered as the embodiment of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva together and as the paragon of yoga and renunciation. The Bhagavata Purana (1.3.11) counts him as the sixth avatara, who taught the knowledge of the Self to Alarka, Prahlada and others, and in the eleventh canto (11.7–9) an avadhuta, traditionally identified with Dattatreya, tells King Yadu of the twenty-four teachers he learned from in nature, from the earth and the bee to the child.

The Markandeya Purana devotes several chapters to Dattatreya and his teaching of yoga to Alarka. A widely told story says that the three gods came to test Anasuya’s chastity and were turned by her into infants, and that Dattatreya was born of their blessing. In the Datta sampradaya of Maharashtra and Karnataka, Shripada Shrivallabha and Narasimha Saraswati are honoured as his later incarnations.

How and where it is observed

The festival is kept mainly in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The great centres are Ganagapur in Karnataka, Narsobawadi and Audumbar in Maharashtra, Pithapuram in Andhra Pradesh, Mahur, and the Datta shrine on the Girnar hill in Gujarat, where crowds gather for the evening of the birth.

Rituals

In the days before, many devotees read the Shri Gurucharitra, the Marathi life of the Datta incarnations, in a seven-day parayana ending on the festival. At dusk temples celebrate the birth: the image is placed in a cradle (palna), rocked to lullabies and showered with flowers, followed by aarti and bhajans. Devotees recite the Datta Bavani or the Avadhuta Gita, offer food to the poor and to cows and dogs, which iconography shows accompanying Dattatreya, and many keep a fast until the evening worship.

How the date is fixed

Datta Jayanti is Margashirsha Purnima, the same month name in the Amanta and Purnimanta calendars. Following the Datta sampradaya tradition that Dattatreya appeared at dusk, the day is the one on which Purnima prevails during Pradosh, from sunset through the first fifth of the night; on two evenings, the evening with the greater coverage, and on neither, the day on which Purnima prevails longest. Some panchangs instead take the day of Purnima at sunrise (udaya tithi), which gives the next day when Purnima covers one evening and the following sunrise.

Sources

• Bhagavata Purana 1.3.11 (Dattatreya, the sixth avatara)
• Bhagavata Purana 11.7–9 (the avadhuta and his twenty-four teachers)
• Markandeya Purana (Dattatreya and Alarka)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Dattatreya

Customs differ between regions, communities and families; this description is background, not a prescription. The date above is calculated by the rule shown on this page.