ಆಡಿ ಪೆರುಕ್ಕು | Aadi Perukku

Aadi Perukku, also called Padinettam Perukku, the rising of the eighteenth, is kept on the eighteenth day of Aadi, the Tamil solar month that begins in the middle of July. It is a festival of the rivers, and above all of the Kaveri. In a good year the Mettur dam has released its water by then and fresh water is flowing down into the delta, and the people of the river country go down to the banks to welcome it, to worship the river as Mother Kaveri, and to pray for water and a good harvest. Perukku is the rising or swelling of the water.

How it is kept

Families go down to the ghats to bathe and to worship the river. Women and young couples bathe for a peaceful and prosperous married life, and newly married women tie new mangalya threads. At Srirangam the crowds go to the Amma Mandapam ghat, where Namperumal, the processional image of Sri Ranganatha, is brought down to the river to honour the Kaveri. Thiruvaiyaru, Kumbakonam and Swamimalai have their own Kaveri ghats where the day is kept, and in Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi the Thamirabarani is thanked in the same way.

The food of the day is the mixed rice dishes, chitrannam: lemon rice, tamarind rice, coconut rice, curd rice, sesame rice and sweet pongal, offered first and then eaten, in many places on the river bank itself. Families who cannot go to the river set a pot of clean water on a banana leaf to stand for it, and offer flowers, turmeric and kumkum and the rice dishes to it at home.

The river has not always come. In years when the Mettur dam released no water and the Kaveri ran dry at the ghats, people kept the day all the same with well water, tank water and water from the tap.

Which day Anudina gives

Aadi Perukku is fixed by the solar calendar, not by a tithi. Anudina counts the eighteenth day of Aadi from the Tamil rule for the start of a month: when the Sun enters Karka between sunrise and sunset, that day is Aadi 1, and when it enters after sunset, the next day is. Aadi 18 falls seventeen days later. Anudina follows the drik reckoning, as Drik Panchang’s Tamil calendar does. Tamil calendars that follow the vakya panchangam can begin the month a day apart from it in some years, and their Aadi 18 moves with it. The sankranti page explains how a solar month begins.

The day is shown to readers who keep the South Indian custom, as a Tamil row, and to any reader who has chosen to see the festivals of other regions. The next date Anudina gives is 3 August 2027.

Related days

The new moon of the same month is Aadi Amavasai, the day of tharpanam for the departed. The two can fall close together or even on the same day: in 2027 Aadi Amavasai falls on 2 August, the day before. Andal’s day, Thiruvadipooram, is in the same month. In Karnataka, the Kaveri’s own day comes at its source, at Talakaveri in Kodagu, at Tula Sankramana in October, when the Sun enters Tula.