Puthandu (Tamil New Year)

About Puthandu (Tamil New Year)

Significance

Puthandu is the Tamil New Year, the first day of Chithirai, the month in which the Sun enters sidereal Mesha (Aries) and the Tamil solar year begins. The Tamil calendar is a solar one: its months follow the Sun’s passage through the twelve signs, while festivals within the months are still fixed by tithi and nakshatra. Each year carries a name from the sixty-year cycle that opens with Prabhava, and the arrival of the new year is greeted with the words Puthandu vazhthukkal.

The day is a renewal of the household and of the agricultural year at the height of the Tamil summer. Its emphasis falls on beginning the year with auspicious sights, foods that hold all the tastes of life and a hearing of what the new almanac says about the year. In 2008 the Tamil Nadu government moved the official New Year to the first of Thai; the change was reversed in 2011, and Chithirai 1 is again the official Tamil New Year.

How and where it is observed

Puthandu is a public holiday in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and is kept by Tamil communities in Sri Lanka, where it coincides with the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and in Malaysia, Singapore and the wider diaspora. The same solar ingress opens the year as Vishu in Kerala, Vaisakhi in Punjab and Bohag Bihu in Assam, each with its own customs and its own day rule.

Rituals

Houses are cleaned and kolams drawn at the entrance. In many homes the first sight of the year is a tray of fruit, flowers, gold, betel and a mirror, arranged the night before. After an early bath and new clothes, families visit temples and prepare a festive meal that includes mangai pachadi, a dish of raw mango, jaggery, neem flowers and tamarind combining sweet, sour and bitter, read as the mixed experiences of the coming year. The reading of the new panchangam (panchanga padanam) at temples and homes is a widely kept custom.

How the date is fixed

Puthandu has no tithi: it is Chithirai 1, set by the Sun’s entry into sidereal Mesha. By the Tamil month-start rule, if the ingress happens before sunset that day is Chithirai 1; if it happens after sunset, the next day is. The ingress here is computed by the drik (Thirukanitha) method with the ayanamsa of your calculation profile; Tamil panchangs on the older Vakya system compute it differently and can differ by a day. Because each regional new year applies its own rule to the same ingress, Puthandu and Mesha Sankranti can fall on different dates.

Sources

• Robert Sewell and Sankara Balkrishna Dikshit, The Indian Calendar (1896): solar months and the Tamil month-start rule
• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Hindu calendar (regional New Years at Mesha Sankranti)
• Tamil Nadu Tamil New Year (Declaration) Act, 2008, and its repeal in 2011

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.