ನಾಗುಲ ಚೌತಿ | Nagula Chaviti

Nagula Chaviti is the fourth tithi of the bright fortnight of Kartika, the fourth day after Deepavali. It is a serpent observance, and it is chiefly an Andhra Pradesh and Telangana one. It is worth saying plainly that it is not a Karnataka festival: Anudina lists it because households with Telugu connections keep it and because a reader who sees the name should be able to find out what it is, not because it is kept here.

When it falls

It is Kartika Shukla Chaturthi, taken at sunrise: the day at whose sunrise Chaturthi is running carries it. The observance runs through the morning, the fast is kept from waking, and there is no separate hour the rite must be performed at, so the ordinary rule applies without complication.

A minority of families keep the observance on the following tithi instead and call it Nagula Panchami, on the same reasoning that places Naga Panchami on a fifth. Where a family has that custom it should follow it; the app gives the Chaturthi, which is the commoner practice.

What is done

Women keep a fast from waking and go before eating to an anthill, a putta, or to a Subrahmanya or Naga temple. Milk is poured into the mouth of the anthill, along with water, turmeric and often an egg-shaped offering of rice flour and jaggery called chalimidi, and sesame and jaggery pressed into balls. Lamps are lit at the anthill and the serpent is asked for the health of children and for relief from skin complaints and from the afflictions attributed to the serpent planets in a horoscope. The fast is broken after the offering.

Families with an inherited Naga dosha, or who believe an anthill or a serpent on family land was disturbed, treat the day as their principal occasion for making amends, and some go to Subrahmanya temples at a distance for it.

Not the same as Naga Panchami

This is the confusion worth heading off. Naga Panchami is the fifth tithi of the bright fortnight of Shravana, three months earlier, and it is the serpent observance of Karnataka, Maharashtra and most of North India. Milk is offered at anthills and at stone naga images on that day too, and the two look alike from the outside, but they are separate festivals in separate months kept by largely separate regions. A Kannada household that keeps Naga Panchami in Shravana does not usually keep Nagula Chaviti in Kartika, and a Telugu household may keep both.

Karnataka’s other serpent day is Subrahmanya Shashti in Margashira, which is the great day at Kukke Subrahmanya. See Subrahmanya Shashti.

One further point. The fourth tithi of a bright fortnight is ordinarily Vinayaka Chaturthi, the monthly day of Ganesha, and this one is no exception. The serpent observance sits on top of a tithi that already belongs to Ganesha, and in Andhra both are kept on the same morning without anyone finding it odd.