THEKUA AND THE DIVINE

TODAY is honoured across a wide swathe of Eastern India as the centrepoint of the four-day Chhath Puja or Surya Shashti Vrat.

- RENUKA NARAYANAN

The word Chhath comes from the Sanskrit word Shashti, meaning ‘sixth’. Chhath Puja falls six days after Diwali and is widely observed in Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Nepal. A folkloric angle later involved an aspect of the Devi called Chhati Mayi, who grants children to childless parents, and protects them thereafter. But it is essentially an ancient festival in honour of Lord Surya, thanking the sun god for the completed seasonal harvest.

What makes the festival trebly special to devotees is its epic links. It is not a gender-specific festival, though nowadays we see pictures of mostly women performing this puja. However, no less than Sita Devi and Sri Rama are said to have performed Surya Shashti puja after returning from Lanka. Additionally, people in Munger, Bihar, believe that Sita performed this ritual there. Munger, formerly known as Monghyr, was originally Mudgagiri, founded by Chandragupta II in the ancient kingdom of Anga. It was one of the major cities in Eastern India, including undivided Bengal, during the Mughal period and British Raj. It is about 180 km east of Patna and was once the cultural capital of the region. I read that the Sitacharan (Sita’s footprints) temple, situated on a boulder in the middle of the Ganga at Munger, is the main centre of public faith for Chhath Puja.