ಗೌರಿ ತದಿಗೆ | Gauri Tritiya

Gauri Tritiya is a women’s observance on the third tithi of the bright fortnight of Chaitra, two days after Ugadi. It is a domestic festival rather than a temple one, and it is kept quietly, which is why many people who live beside it never learn its name.

When it falls

The tithi is Chaitra Shukla Tritiya, and the day that carries it is the day on which the tritiya is running at sunrise. There is no midday or dusk condition attached, so the date is one of the simpler ones in the year to settle.

What is done

Gauri is understood to have arrived at her mother’s house for a visit, and she is seated accordingly: a small metal or clay image, or a decorated kalasha, placed in a cradle or on a low swing and adorned with flowers, bangles and turmeric. In Maharashtra the form is called Chaitragaur and the seating is more elaborate, with a decorated tableau of sweets, fruit and small vessels arranged around the swing.

She is not sent back the same day. The visit runs until Akshaya Tritiya in the following month, and through that month married women invite one another home for haldi kumkum, offering turmeric, vermilion, a betel leaf and areca, bangles, and something cooling to drink: panaka, or soaked gram, or slices of cucumber and raw mango. The invitations are the point of the observance as much as the puja is. On the last day Gauri is given a send-off and the image is put away.

The same tithi in the North

In Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and parts of Gujarat this tithi closes Gangaur, an eighteen-day observance beginning the day after Holi. Images of Gauri and Isar, that is Parvati and Shiva, are dressed and carried in procession through the town, and unmarried girls keep it for a good husband while married women keep it for the welfare of theirs. The scale is entirely different from the Karnataka observance, though the tithi and the deity are the same.

What it is not

This is the point on which readers most often go wrong. The great Gauri festival of Karnataka is Swarna Gauri Vrata, and that falls on the third tithi of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, the day before Ganesha Chaturthi, when Gauri is welcomed and Ganesha arrives the next morning to take her home. It is a much larger occasion, and it is a different festival on a different tithi in a different month. The two share a name and a tithi number and nothing else.

Gauri Tritiya is also sometimes called Saubhagya Gauri Tritiya or Dolotsava, the swing festival, from the cradle she is seated in. Where a local calendar prints Manvadi or other markers against this tithi, those are separate entries that happen to share the day.