ಓಣಂ, ತಿರುವೋಣಂ | Onam, Thiruvonam

Onam is the great festival of Kerala, kept on the day of the nakshatra Thiruvonam, which is Shravana, in the Malayalam month of Chingam, when the Sun is in Simha, in August or September. Chingam is the first month of the Kollam era, the Malayalam year. Thiruvonam is the last and the greatest of ten days of festivity that begin on Atham, the Hasta nakshatra, and it is the day on which Mahabali, the king of the old story, is believed to come home to see his people. Kerala made Onam its state festival in 1961.

The story

Mahabali, the asura king, ruled Kerala so well and his people were so content that the gods grew uneasy. Vishnu came to him as Vamana, the dwarf brahmachari, and asked for three paces of land. Bali granted them, the dwarf grew to cover the earth and the sky in two strides, and Bali offered his own head for the third. He was sent below, with one boon: to visit his people once a year. Onam is that homecoming, and the feast is laid so that he finds them as content as he left them. The story is told more fully, with the day on which Vamana’s appearance is kept, on the Vamana Jayanti page.

The ten days

From Atham a pookalam, a carpet of flowers, is laid at the door. On Atham it is small and of yellow flowers alone, and it grows day by day until Thiruvonam. The season opens on Atham with the Athachamayam procession at Thrippunithura near Kochi, with decorated elephants, drums, floats and folk arts. The temple at the centre of the festival is the Vamanamoorthy temple at Thrikkakara, also near Kochi, which tradition associates with Mahabali.

On Thiruvonam the family bathes early and wears new clothes, the onakkodi. A clay figure of Thrikkakara Appan, Vamana as the household receives him, is set in the courtyard, and the family sits down to the sadya, the feast served on a banana leaf, of many dishes. A Malayalam saying holds that one should eat the Onam feast even if one has to sell one’s land to do it: kaanam vittum onam unnanam. Vallam kali, the boat races, and the Onam songs belong to the season; the Aranmula Uthrattathi boat race is among the best known. The festivity runs on for two more days, the third and fourth Onam, and on the third, Avittam, the clay Onathappan is immersed.

Which day Anudina gives

Onam is not fixed by a tithi. Anudina gives the day on which the Thiruvonam nakshatra is running at sunrise while the Sun is in Simha, that is, in the month of Chingam. If the nakshatra holds sunrise on two days running, the first is taken. Because it follows a nakshatra and a solar month, Onam does not keep step with Vamana Jayanti, which follows a lunar tithi in Bhadrapada; the two come in the same season but on different days. The day is shown to readers who keep the South Indian custom, as a Kerala row, and to any reader who has chosen to see the festivals of other regions. The next Onam Anudina gives is 12 September 2027.

Bali elsewhere

Kerala is not the only place that keeps Bali’s yearly return. Karnataka keeps it at a different point of the year altogether, on Bali Padyami, the day after the Deepavali new moon. How a solar month such as Chingam begins is explained on the sankranti page.