ಯುಗಾದಿ | Ugadi

Ugadi is the new year of the lunisolar calendar as it is kept in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The name is yuga and adi, the beginning of an age. It opens the month of Chaitra, and with it the samvatsara, the named year of the sixty-year cycle.

When it falls, and why

Ugadi is Chaitra Shukla Prathama, the first tithi of the bright fortnight of Chaitra. The day that carries it is the day on which that tithi is running at sunrise.

Prathama is often a short tithi, and a short tithi can begin after one sunrise and end before the next, so that no sunrise falls inside it at all. The convention then is that such a tithi takes the day it begins on. In a year of that kind Ugadi is kept on the day the tithi starts, even though the sun rose that morning while Amavasya was still running. This is the commonest reason two almanacs disagree about Ugadi, and it is not a mistake in either of them. Anudina prints the start and end times so the case can be seen rather than guessed at.

Chaitra itself is fixed by the sun. The lunar month that begins while the sun stands in Meena is Chaitra, and that solar anchor is what keeps Ugadi in spring instead of letting it drift backwards through the seasons.

The year changes its name

The sixty samvatsara names turn over on this morning, and so does the Shaka year. Someone who has seen their birth samvatsara return has completed sixty years, which is the occasion of the shashtiabdapurti.

The formal observance of the day is the panchanga shravana, the reading of the new almanac. In temples and at the mathas the year ahead is read out: the ruling planets of the year, the expected rainfall, the eclipses, and a forecast for each rashi. In Karnataka this reading, in the Sringeri sampradaya and elsewhere, is the part of the day that gives the festival its character. It is a calendar festival before it is anything else.

Bevu bella

Before anything else is eaten, a little neem flower is taken with jaggery. The two tastes are bitter and sweet, and nothing is done to soften the neem. The statement being made is plain: the year will bring both, and both are to be accepted. Some households extend it to six tastes, adding raw mango, tamarind, salt and chilli.

The rest of the day follows the usual shape of a South Indian festival: an oil bath before dawn, new clothes, mango leaves strung over the doorway, a rangoli, and obbattu or holige at the meal.

The same day elsewhere, and the days that are not the same

Maharashtra and Goa keep this tithi as Gudi Padwa, raising the gudi at the door. Sindhi families keep it as Cheti Chand. These are the same day under other names.

Tamil Nadu and Kerala are a different matter. Puthandu and Vishu are solar new years, kept when the sun enters Mesha, about a fortnight after Ugadi. Because they are tied to the sun they fall on nearly the same Gregorian date every year, while Ugadi moves through late March and April. Baisakhi in Punjab, Poila Boishakh in Bengal and Bohag Bihu in Assam belong to the same solar reckoning. So the question of when the Indian new year falls has at least two correct answers, and the difference is not regional stubbornness but two different clocks.