Shani Jayanti

About Shani Jayanti

Significance

Shani Jayanti is kept as the birth anniversary of Shani Dev, the planet Saturn personified. The Vishnu Purana (3.2) relates that Samjna, the wife of the Sun god Vivasvat, could not bear his radiance and left her shadow, Chhaya, in her place; Chhaya bore him sons, among them Shanaishchara, the slow-moving one, so named for Saturn’s slow passage through the zodiac.

In Jyotisha Shani is the significator of time, discipline, labour, endurance and justice, the graha whose periods such as the Sade Sati are traditionally regarded as testing. Puranic and popular stories present him as stern but fair, dispensing the results of a person’s own actions, and devotees approach him on this day with humility and prayer. The well-known Shani stotra attributed to King Dasharatha, traditionally traced to the Padma Purana, is widely recited.

How and where it is observed

The day is kept mainly in North and West India, at Shani temples such as Shani Shingnapur in Maharashtra and the many Shani shrines of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and by devotees who visit Hanuman temples, since Hanuman is traditionally held to protect from Shani’s affliction. In South India the Navagraha temple of Thirunallar in Tamil Nadu is the great centre of Shani worship. In North India the same Amavasya is usually also the day of the Vat Savitri vrat.

Rituals

Devotees bathe early, visit Shani shrines and pour sesame oil over the image or stone, offering black sesame, black cloth, blue flowers, urad lentils and iron items. Many recite the Shani stotra, Shani mantras or the Hanuman Chalisa, light lamps of sesame oil under a peepal tree and give food, clothing or footwear to the poor and to labourers, acts traditionally associated with Shani. Some keep a fast until evening.

How the date is fixed

Shani Jayanti falls on the Amavasya that ends the dark fortnight after Vaishakha Purnima. In the Purnimanta calendar of North India this is Jyeshtha Amavasya; in the Amanta calendar the same day is Vaishakha Amavasya, so the date is the same and only the month name differs. It is kept on the day on which Amavasya prevails at sunrise (udaya tithi); if Amavasya is present at two sunrises the first day is taken, and if it touches no sunrise, the day that contains it.

Sources

• Vishnu Purana 3.2 (Samjna, Chhaya and the birth of Shanaishchara)
• Padma Purana (Dasharatha’s Shani stotra, as traditionally attributed)
• Markandeya Purana (the Samjna and Chhaya narrative of the Sun’s children)

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.