Chhath Puja, the Festival of Surya Worship

Chhath takes its name from chhath, the sixth. Its main rites fall on the sixth day of the bright fortnight of Kartik, a few days after Diwali. The festival is a direct act of gratitude to Surya, the Sun God, and to Chhathi Maiya, the mother who guards children and the wellbeing of the family. A smaller observance called Chaiti Chhath is kept in the month of Chaitra, but the Kartik festival is the great one.

Chhath is among the most demanding festivals in Hindu practice. It asks for physical endurance, strict purity and complete trust in the unseen. Yet its form is simple. There are no images, no priest and no elaborate liturgy, only the devotee, the water and the Sun.

Worship of the Sun is among the oldest strands of Indian devotion. The Rigveda contains hymns to Surya, and verse 1.115.1 calls him the soul of all that moves and all that stands still. Later tradition kept the practice of offering water to the Sun and chanting his names. The Aditya Hridayam, which the sage Agastya teaches to Rama before the battle with Ravana in the Yuddha Kanda of the Ramayana, is one of the best loved of these hymns.

The Mahabharata remembers several people who turned to the Sun. In the Vana Parva, Karna worships Surya every day, and the god appears to him in a dream to warn him about Indra's coming request for his armour and earrings. In the same Parva, the sage Dhaumya instructs Yudhishthira to worship Surya during the exile, and the Sun gives him a vessel that supplies food each day. Popular Chhath tradition adds that Draupadi kept the vrata to restore the Pandavas' fortunes, and local memory in Bihar also links the observance with Sita. These accounts come from tradition rather than from a single scripture. They express how deeply the festival is felt to belong to the epic age.

The Brahma Vaivarta Purana tells of Shashthi in chapter 43 of its Prakriti Khanda. She is the sixth part of Prakriti, the creative power of the divine, and she watches over newborn children. Chhathi Maiya is understood as this same mother. Folk tradition often calls her the sister of Surya, and families pray to her for the health and long life of their children. This is why Chhath joins worship of the Sun, who gives life to the fields, with the protection of the child.

On the first day, Nahay Khay, the vratins (those observing the Chhath fast) bathe in a river and eat a single pure meal, usually of bottle gourd and rice. On the second day, Kharna, they fast until evening and then eat kheer made with jaggery, with rotis. After that meal a fast without food or water begins and lasts about thirty-six hours.

On the third day, Sandhya Arghya, families walk to a riverbank or pond. They carry bamboo baskets, called soop, filled with thekua, fruit and sugarcane. The vratins stand in the water and offer arghya (a ritual offering of water) to the setting Sun. This is a deliberate act of honour to the Sun even as it declines. On the fourth day, before sunrise, the same offering is made to the rising Sun in Usha Arghya. The fast is then broken with prasad.

What marks Chhath is its insistence on purity over ritual complexity. The prasad is cooked without salt, onion or garlic. The vratin performs every rite personally, and no priest is needed. Some walk long distances barefoot, and all stand in cold water at dawn and dusk.

The festival is also open and egalitarian. It is held outdoors, on riverbanks and ghats where entire communities gather regardless of caste or wealth. It honours the Sun as the source of life that feeds every field and household alike. Those who do not fast help the vratins and share in the prasad.

Chhath is celebrated with great devotion across Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh and the Terai of Nepal. It has travelled with the Bihari and Purvanchali diaspora to Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, and also to Mauritius, Singapore, the Gulf, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Wherever there is a river, a pond or a built ghat, families gather at dusk and dawn. They renew the same ascetic gratitude to the Sun that has sustained their harvests and their lives.