ಸ್ವರ್ಣ ಗೌರಿ ವ್ರತ | Swarna Gauri Vrata

Swarna Gauri Vrata is kept by married women on the third tithi of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, the day before Ganesha Chaturthi. The story it rests on is domestic: Gauri, the daughter of the mountain, comes to her parents house for her yearly visit, and the next morning her son is sent to fetch her back. In Karnataka the two days are not separate festivals. A household that installs Ganesha on the chaturthi has almost always installed Gauri the evening or morning before, and the pair are spoken of together as Gowri-Ganesha.

When it falls, and why it can crowd the chaturthi

The day is decided by the tritiya running at sunrise. That is the ordinary rule, and it is worth setting beside the rule used for the day that follows. Ganesha Chaturthi is decided not at sunrise but at madhyahna, the middle portion of the daylight. Two different reference moments mean the two observances are usually on consecutive dates but are not guaranteed to be. If the tritiya is current at sunrise and gives way to the chaturthi before midday, the same date can carry both, and some years an almanac prints Gauri and Ganesha against one day. Anudina shows the tithi start and end times so the reason is visible rather than asserted.

What is done

Gauri is installed as a small image, often of turmeric paste worked by hand, often a metal or clay figure kept in the family and brought out each year. She is set in a decorated mantapa on a bed of rice or grain, in a winnowing tray or on a plate, and offered the sixteen services. The distinctive elements are two.

• The gauri dara, a thread of sixteen knots smeared with turmeric, is worshipped and then tied on the right wrist. It is worn until it wears away.
• The bagina, a set of gifts given in a winnowing basket: rice, toor dal, wheat, turmeric, kumkuma, a blouse piece, bangles, a comb, a small mirror, jaggery, a coconut. The first bagina is offered to Gauri herself, and the rest are given to married women, to the mother in law, and to elders. Five, sixteen or as many as the household can manage.

The food is modest and fixed by family habit rather than by rule: payasa, chitranna, kadubu in some houses, holige in others. The image is immersed with Ganesha, on the next day or whenever the family takes Ganesha to the water.

What it is not

The same tithi in North India is Hartalika Teej, and it is a different observance on the same day. There the fast is severe, often without water, it is kept by unmarried women as well for the sake of a good husband, and the story told is of Parvati carried off by her friends to the forest so that she would not be married to Vishnu. The Karnataka observance has no such narrative and no such fast. It is a vrata for the welfare of the husband and the house, and its whole colour comes from the visit of a daughter to her mother.

Nor is this the Gauri of the Jyeshtha Gauri kept in Maharashtra later in the same fortnight, which Karnataka keeps in its own form as the Jyeshtha Lakshmi Vrata.