ನವರಾತ್ರಿ ಆರಂಭ | Navaratri begins

Navaratri is nine nights given to the goddess. It opens on the first tithi of the bright fortnight of Ashwina and runs to the ninth. The tenth day, Vijayadashami, is counted separately and closes the whole. In Karnataka the entire stretch is Dasara, and it is the state festival, the nada habba.

When it begins

The first day is Ashwina Shukla Prathama, taken at sunrise: the day on which Prathama is running when the sun rises carries the start. That is the ordinary rule, and it applies here because the day’s work, establishing the kalasha, begins something that is kept through all nine days rather than a rite tied to one hour.

Prathama is often a short tithi. It can begin after one sunrise and end before the next, touching no sunrise at all, in which case it takes the day it begins on and Navaratri starts on a day whose sunrise tithi was Amavasya. It can also be long enough to be current at two consecutive sunrises. Either way the nine nights are not always nine dates: the festival is fitted to the tithis, so a Navaratri of eight days or ten is not an error.

Ghatasthapana

The festival opens with ghatasthapana, also called kalasha sthapana: a pot of water with a coconut and mango leaves set on a bed of rice or of earth, and in many houses barley sown in that earth on the same morning and watched as it sprouts through the nine days. The kalasha stands for the goddess, is kept lit and attended, and is taken down only on Vijayadashami.

The nine nights

The usual division gives three nights each to Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, in that order: what obstructs is destroyed first, what sustains is invoked next, what enlightens last. Households differ on the details and some keep a different sequence of nine forms of the goddess, one to each night.

One day in the stretch is fixed by nakshatra rather than by tithi. Saraswati is invoked on the day Mula runs, books and instruments and tools of learning are set before her and not used, and they are taken up again on Vijayadashami. See Saraswati Avahana. Ayudha Puja, the worship of implements, falls on Mahanavami in most Karnataka households.

Bombe habba

Karnataka keeps bombe habba, the festival of dolls. A stepped platform of an odd number of steps, usually seven or nine, is raised in the house and dolls are arranged on it: the pattada bombe, a royal couple handed down in the family, at the top, then deities, then people, animals, shops and scenes of ordinary life down to the lowest step. Neighbours and relatives are invited to see it, and women and girls who come are given tamboola. Tamil Nadu keeps the same custom as golu and Andhra as bommala koluvu.

Mysore

Mysore Dasara is the public form of the festival, and the court version is old: the Vijayanagara kings kept it at Hampi, where the Mahanavami Dibba they watched from still stands, and the Wodeyars continued it at Srirangapatna and then at Mysore. The palace is lit through the nine nights, and on the tenth day Chamundeshwari is carried in the Jamboo Savari to the Bannimantap.

Which Navaratri

There are four navaratris in the year. This one, in Ashwina, is Sharada Navaratri and much the largest. Vasanta Navaratri in Chaitra ends in Rama Navami and is kept mainly in the North. Two more, in Ashadha and Magha, are called gupta navaratri and kept quietly by those with a particular practice. Navaratri without a qualifier means this one.

Bengal’s Durga Puja overlaps with it but is not the same festival. It begins on Shashthi, the sixth, and its principal days are the sixth to the tenth. A Kannada household keeping nine nights and a Bengali household keeping five are both counting correctly from different starting points.