ವಿನಾಯಕ ಚತುರ್ಥಿ | Vinayaka Chaturthi

Vinayaka Chaturthi is the fourth tithi of the bright fortnight, kept every lunar month as a vrata of Ganesha. It is also called Varada Chaturthi or Vinayaki Chaturthi. The great annual observance, Ganesha Chaturthi, is this same tithi in the month of Bhadrapada.

The hour is midday

The reference moment is madhyahna, the middle third of the daylight, found by dividing the interval from sunrise to sunset into five parts and taking the third of them. The day that carries Vinayaka Chaturthi is the day whose madhyahna has chaturthi running in it, and the puja is performed in that window.

This matters more than it looks. A chaturthi that is current at sunrise but ends before the middle of the day does not carry the vrata; a chaturthi that begins in the late morning does. When chaturthi covers madhyahna on two successive days, the earlier is taken. Two calendars that both claim to follow the tithi can print different dates because one has applied the sunrise rule and the other the midday rule, and only the second is correct for this observance.

What is done

The fast is kept until the midday puja. Ganesha is worshipped in a clay image or in a supari or a turmeric cone, with durva grass, red flowers, and modaka, kadubu or panchakajjaya. The sixteen upacharas are offered where the household keeps the full form, and a simple arati where it does not. The monthly vrata is undertaken particularly before an examination, a journey or any beginning, since Ganesha is invoked at the start of things by definition.

The moon

The rule everyone knows attaches to this tithi and not to the dark fortnight one: on Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturthi the moon is not to be looked at. Anyone who sees it is said to attract a false accusation, a mithya dosha.

The story is the Syamantaka. Krishna was accused of taking the jewel and killing Satrajit for it, and cleared himself only after a long search and a fight with Jambavan. The reason given for the accusation falling on him at all was that he had glanced at the moon on this chaturthi. The remedy prescribed for anyone who sees the moon by accident is to hear or read the Syamantaka story, on the reasoning that Krishna himself was released by the truth coming out.

In Karnataka the avoidance is taken seriously on the Bhadrapada day, and households will keep indoors or look at the ground on the way home from a pandal. It is not extended to the other eleven Vinayaka Chaturthis of the year, though some families avoid the moon on all of them.

Which chaturthi is which

The names are worth keeping straight, because the two monthly chaturthis are easily confused and the difference is not cosmetic.

• Vinayaka Chaturthi is in the bright fortnight. Its moment is midday. The fast is broken after the midday puja. The moon is avoided.
• Sankashti Chaturthi is in the dark fortnight. Its moment is moonrise, computed for the place the observer is in. The fast is broken only after the moon is seen.

Both are Ganesha vratas and both come round every lunar month, but they are opposite in hour and opposite in what they ask the observer to do with the moon.