ಮಾಸ ಶಿವರಾತ್ರಿ | Masa Shivaratri

Masa Shivaratri is the monthly Shivaratri: the chaturdashi of the dark fortnight, kept in every lunar month with a fast and a night puja. Twelve of them fall in an ordinary year and thirteen when there is an intercalary month. The one that falls in Magha is Maha Shivaratri, and the difference between them is one of scale, not of kind.

Which night carries it

The reference moment is nishita, the middle watch of the night, found by dividing the interval from sunset to sunrise into equal parts and taking the one that straddles the midpoint. The night whose nishita has chaturdashi running in it is the night of the observance.

A reader who checks only the tithi at sunrise will sometimes take the wrong day, because a chaturdashi that runs at sunrise and ends during the evening never reaches the following nishita, and the observance then belongs to the night before. When a long chaturdashi covers nishita on two successive nights, the earlier is taken. The rule is the same one Maha Shivaratri uses. Anudina prints the chaturdashi boundaries against the nishita window so the choice can be checked.

What is done

The observance is the smaller form of the great one. A fast through the day, often phalahara rather than a complete abstention, an abhisheka to the linga in the evening or at night with water, milk and the panchamrita, bilva leaves, vibhuti, and the recitation of the Rudram or of Om Namah Shivaya. The all-night vigil in four watches is kept by some and not by most; it is on the Magha night that the vigil becomes general.

In Karnataka the monthly Shivaratri is largely a temple observance. Shiva temples hold a night abhisheka, and households that keep the vrata keep it steadily rather than occasionally, in the way Sankashti Chaturthi is kept. The evening before is the dark fortnight Pradosha, the trayodashi, so the two run into each other and a household observing both has two consecutive evenings at the temple.

A note on the month name

In the amanta reckoning used in Karnataka the dark fortnight belongs to the month whose bright fortnight has just ended, so this chaturdashi carries that month name. In the purnimanta reckoning of North India the same night falls under the next month name. Nothing about the night changes; only the label does, and this is why the monthly Shivaratri and Maha Shivaratri are both described under two different month names depending on who is writing.