Chhath Puja Vidhi: The Four Days, Step by Step

Chhath Puja is a four-day worship of the Sun and Chhathi Maiya in which the vrati keeps strict purity, fasts for about thirty-six hours without water, and offers arghya standing in water to the setting sun and then to the rising sun. In outline: nahay-khay on the first day, kharna on the second, the evening arghya on Shashthi, and the dawn arghya the next morning, after which the fast is broken with prasad.

The days and the sunrise and sunset for your city are on the Chhath Puja date page; the spring observance in Chaitra is on the Chaiti Chhath page. This page does not repeat them, because they change every year and from city to city.

A word on health first

The Chhath fast is long and nirjala, and it often comes with a cold dawn spent standing in water. Pregnant women, people with diabetes, heart or kidney conditions, and older vratis keep a lighter form, with water, fruit or a single meal, and a doctor's advice comes first. Many families let another member take up the vrat, or share it, and Chhathi Maiya's songs never ask anyone to harm themselves. Those who cannot fast take part fully by cooking, carrying the daura and helping at the ghat.

Samagri: what to keep ready

• Soop (winnowing baskets of bamboo) and a daura (a deep bamboo basket) for carrying the offerings; many families use brass soop as well
• Thekua: wheat flour, jaggery or sugar, ghee, a little coconut and fennel, fried in ghee
• Kasar or rice-flour laddoos, made with jaggery
• Fruit of the season: bananas (a whole bunch in many homes), sugarcane stalks, coconut with its water, sweet lime, oranges, apples, water chestnut (singhara), sweet potato, radish with leaves, turmeric and ginger plants with roots
• Rice and gur for the kharna kheer (rasiya), and wheat for roti
• Earthen diyas, ghee, cotton wicks, incense
• Milk and water in a lota for the arghya, often a copper or brass lota
• Sindoor, vermilion paste for the soop, a new cotton cloth, and new clothes for the vrati (often a plain sari or a dhoti, many without stitching)
• For families keeping kosi: five or more sugarcane stalks, an earthen kosi (a pot or elephant-shaped lamp holder) and a clay or mango-wood chulha

What matters is that everything is clean and new to the festival. Many families buy nothing special and simply wash and dry their soop and utensils with care.

Step by step

1. Before the festival. The house is cleaned thoroughly, and in many homes wheat for the prasad is washed and dried on the roof while someone keeps the birds off. The ghat or a pond is cleaned by the neighbourhood.
2. Day one, nahay-khay. The vrati bathes, in a river if possible, and puts on clean clothes. A single meal is cooked in pure conditions, usually rice, chana dal and lauki (bottle gourd) cooked with ghee and rock salt, without onion or garlic. The vrati eats first, then the family.
3. Day two, kharna. The vrati fasts through the day. In the evening, on a new or freshly cleaned chulha fed with mango wood, the kharna prasad is cooked: rice kheer with jaggery (rasiya) and wheat roti, sometimes with bananas. The vrati offers it to Chhathi Maiya and eats it in quiet, often alone, and the family takes it as prasad afterwards. From this moment the waterless fast begins.
4. Day three, preparing the offerings. Thekua and kasar are made at home, often by the whole family, the women singing. The soop are filled with thekua, fruit, coconut, sugarcane, turmeric and ginger, a diya placed in each, and the soop are loaded into the daura.
5. Day three, the sandhya arghya. In the afternoon the family walks to the ghat, the men often carrying the daura on their heads and many barefoot. The vrati steps into the water up to the waist, faces the setting sun, and holds the soop while a family member pours milk or water over it as arghya. Each soop is offered in turn. The family sings on the bank.
6. Kosi bharna, the same night. Families with a mannat set up the kosi in the courtyard: sugarcane stalks tied at the top into a canopy, the kosi pot beneath with lamps lit around it, the soop placed close by, and songs through the evening.
7. Day four, the usha arghya. Before dawn the family returns to the ghat, often setting the kosi up again on the bank. The vrati stands in the water facing east and waits for the sun. When it rises, arghya is offered as in the evening.
8. Paran, breaking the fast. The vrati prays, touches the elders' feet and is touched in turn, distributes prasad at the ghat, and then breaks the fast at home with water, a little ginger, thekua or sharbat, before a light meal.

Checking the time

The two moments that matter are sunset on Shashthi and sunrise on Saptami, and both differ from city to city by many minutes. The panchang for your city gives the sunrise and sunset for the day, and families who like to set out for the ghat in a good period look at the choghadiya. Reach the ghat with enough time to find a safe place in the water before the sun touches the horizon.

Customs families keep

These are customs, not conditions; your family's own way comes first.

• No onion, garlic or ordinary salt in the house during the four days; rock salt only where salt is used, and none on kharna.
• The prasad is not tasted before it is offered, and nobody steps over the drying wheat.
• Many vratis sleep on the floor on a mat for the four days.
• The prasad is cooked on a separate chulha, in separate utensils kept for Chhath.
• People who cannot fast still keep the house's purity and serve the vratis; elders often bless children by touching them with the soop.
• Some vratis who made a vow walk to the ghat, or prostrate themselves along the way, which is called dand dena; most do not, and nobody is expected to.

At the ghat: practical care

Cold water at dawn and crowded ghats ask for some care. Stand where the bank is firm and the water shallow, keep a family member close, and come out to warm up between offerings. Keep children on the bank, keep diyas away from saris, and follow the volunteers and the local administration's barricades. Many families now keep Chhath on a roof or in a courtyard tank, and the arghya is complete there too.

Regional ways

• Bihar and Jharkhand: the ghats of the Ganga and every pond are lined with families; Maithili, Magahi and Bhojpuri songs fill the evening.
• Eastern Uttar Pradesh: Varanasi and the Purvanchal towns keep it on the Ganga ghats in much the same way.
• The Nepal Terai: Chhath is a major festival of the Madhesh region.
• Cities far from home: migrant families from Bihar and Purvanchal build artificial ponds in parks and housing societies, and the Chhath of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata is now very large.
• Chaiti Chhath: the same four days kept on the Shashthi of Chaitra in spring, by fewer families, often to fulfil a mannat. The heat makes the waterless fast harder, so the care above matters even more.

After the puja

Share the thekua and fruit with neighbours and everyone who comes; Chhath prasad is meant to travel. The Chhath katha tells the stories behind the four days, and the other vrat Bihar keeps for children is Jitiya.