Vat Purnima

About Vat Purnima

Significance

Vat Purnima honours Savitri, who by tradition won back the life of her husband Satyavan from Yama, the lord of death, and the banyan (vata), the tree under which, in the popular telling, Satyavan lay. Married women keep the vrata for the long life and welfare of their husbands. The banyan, long-lived and spreading by its aerial roots, is in many Hindu traditions regarded as an abode of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

The story is told in the Mahabharata, Vana (Aranyaka) Parva, where the sage Markandeya narrates it to Yudhishthira: Savitri chooses Satyavan though warned that he will die within a year, follows Yama when he takes Satyavan’s life, and by her steadfast reasoning wins boons that restore him. The vrata built on the story is described in later Puranic and digest literature.

How and where it is observed

The Purnima observance is the custom of Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat and Karnataka, regions that follow the Amanta calendar. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha the Savitri vrata is kept instead on Jyeshtha Amavasya (Vat Savitri, or Savitri Amavasya in Odisha), about a fortnight earlier. In Maharashtra some families keep a three-day observance from Trayodashi to Purnima.

Rituals

Women dress in festive clothes, often fast through the day, and gather at a banyan tree, frequently in a temple courtyard or other public place. They offer water, turmeric, kumkum, flowers, soaked grain and fruit, and walk around the trunk winding raw cotton thread about it, the number of rounds following family custom (seven and 108 are common). The Savitri–Satyavan katha is recited, and women exchange offerings of fruit, bangles and kumkum (vayan). Where no tree is at hand, many worship a banyan branch or a picture at home.

How the date is fixed

Vat Purnima is Jyeshtha Shukla Purnima, the same month in Amanta and Purnimanta reckoning because it falls in the bright half. A day counts if Purnima prevails at its sunrise and lasts at least three muhurtas (a fifth of the daytime) after it. When Purnima runs through a substantial part of the daytime on two days, the earlier, Chaturdashi-joined day is kept, by the tithi-yugma rule of Nirnaya Sindhu that pairs Purnima with Chaturdashi; if no sunrise qualifies, the Chaturdashi-joined day on which Purnima began is kept. In a year with an Adhik (extra) Jyeshtha the vrata belongs to the regular (Nija) Jyeshtha.

Sources

• Mahabharata, Vana (Aranyaka) Parva, Pativrata-mahatmya: the story of Savitri and Satyavan
• Nirnaya Sindhu, tithi-yugma rule (quoting Garuda Purana 1.128.16-17)
• Rashtriya Panchang (Government of India almanac), daily pages for Jyeshtha Purnima

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.