ಸಂಕ್ರಾಂತಿ | Sankranti

A sankranti is the moment the sun crosses from one rashi into the next. There are twelve signs, so twelve sankrantis in a year, and together they make the solar calendar that runs alongside the lunar one.

Why these do not move and everything else does

Almost every festival in this calendar is fixed to a tithi, a lunar quantity, and the lunar year is about eleven days shorter than the solar one. That is why Ugadi, Deepavali and Shivaratri fall on a different Gregorian date every year, sliding back and then jumping forward when an intercalary month is inserted.

A sankranti has nothing to do with the moon. It is an event in the sun’s own motion, and the Gregorian calendar is also solar, so the two keep step. Makara Sankranti therefore falls on virtually the same Gregorian date year after year, varying by no more than a day. Anyone who has noticed that one Hindu festival seems fixed while the rest wander has noticed something real.

The ayanamsa, and why Makara is in January

Makara Sankranti is called the beginning of uttarayana, the sun turning north. Astronomically the sun turns north at the winter solstice, in late December, not in the middle of January. The gap has a cause.

Indian astronomy uses the nirayana or sidereal zodiac, measured from a fixed point among the stars. Western astronomy uses the tropical zodiac, measured from the equinox, and the equinox is not fixed: it moves backwards through the stars a degree in about seventy-two years, which is precession. The two zodiacs coincided roughly seventeen centuries ago, and then the sun did enter sidereal Makara at the solstice. They have drifted apart since by about twenty-four degrees. That accumulated difference is the ayanamsa, and it is why the sidereal Makara entry now lags the solstice by some twenty-four days.

It also means the date creeps, by about a day a century. And because more than one value of the ayanamsa is in use, calculations can place the instant of entry a few hours apart, which in a borderline year puts the festival on different days in different almanacs. Anudina prints the instant itself.

Makara Sankranti in Karnataka

This is the harvest festival. The sugarcane is in, the groundnut is in, and the day is given to sharing what has come out of the ground. Households prepare ellu bella: white sesame, jaggery cut small, dry copra, roasted groundnut and fried gram, carried house to house with sugar moulded into figures, sakkare acchu, and lengths of sugarcane. What is said with it is a request as much as a greeting: eat the sesame and the jaggery and speak well.

The cattle have their own day: washed, their horns painted, and in villages across southern Karnataka driven over a line of fire, the kichchu haisodu.

The same sankranti is Pongal in Tamil Nadu, with the boiling over of the new rice; Magh Bihu in Assam; Maghi in Punjab; and the kites of Uttarayan in Gujarat. All are the same solar moment.

The other sankrantis

Three more carry weight. Mesha Sankranti is the solar new year, kept as Vishu in Kerala, Puthandu in Tamil Nadu and Baisakhi in Punjab, and it is why the southern and eastern new years fall on nearly a fixed date while Ugadi moves. Karka Sankranti begins dakshinayana and opens the Karkidaka month of Kerala in which the Ramayana is read. Tula Sankranti is the Tula Sankramana at Talakaveri in Kodagu, when the spring rises at the appointed instant and the Kaveri is held to be born.

Every sankranti carries a punya kala, a window around the instant of entry within which bathing and dana are done. When the sankranti falls at night the punya kala moves to the adjoining daylight, which is why a festival can be kept on the day after the sun actually changed sign.