Rishi Panchami

About Rishi Panchami

Significance

Rishi Panchami is a vrata in honour of the Saptarishis, the seven seers to whom tradition traces the hymns of the Veda and the great family lines: Kashyapa, Atri, Bharadvaja, Vishvamitra, Gautama, Jamadagni and Vasishtha, worshipped together with Arundhati, Vasishtha’s wife and the model of a faithful partner. Keeping the day is understood as an act of gratitude to the rishis and of inner purification.

In the vrata texts, among them the Vrata Raja and a vrata-katha attributed to the Bhavishya Purana, the observance is framed as an expiation by women for unknowing lapses in the rules of ritual purity during menstruation, and the story told is of a Brahmin family whose past faults are released by the vrata. Many families today keep the day chiefly as a time of reverence for the rishis and for the teachers of their lineage (gotra), and traditions vary on how much of the older framing they retain.

How and where it is observed

The vrata is kept mainly by women in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and in Nepal, where Rishi Panchami closes the Teej festival and women bathe in rivers in large numbers. It usually falls on the day after Ganesh Chaturthi, so in Maharashtra it comes in the middle of the Ganeshotsav.

Rituals

The day begins with a ritual bath, in many places in a river, cleaning the teeth with twigs of apamarga and bathing with earth and herbal pastes. Images or symbols of the seven rishis and Arundhati, often drawn on a wooden board or formed of kusha grass, are worshipped with flowers, fruits and sandal paste, and the vrata-katha is heard. Food that day traditionally excludes anything grown with ploughing by draught animals: in Maharashtra a dish of uncultivated or garden vegetables, the Rishi Panchami bhaji, is eaten with wild rice or millet.

How the date is fixed

Rishi Panchami is Bhadrapada Shukla Panchami, the same month name in the Amanta and Purnimanta calendars. The worship belongs to midday, so the day is the one on which Panchami prevails during Madhyahna, the third of the five equal parts of the daytime. If Panchami covers part of Madhyahna on two days, the day with the greater coverage is taken; if it covers Madhyahna on neither day, the day on which it prevails longest.

Sources

• Vrata Raja (Rishipanchami-vrata)
• Bhavishya Purana, Uttara Parva (Rishipanchami vrata-katha, as cited in the vrata digests)
• Dharma Sindhu, Pariccheda 2, Bhadrapada (Rishipanchami)

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.