20 August 2099
- Tithi
- Shukla Panchami · until 10:15 PM
- Nakshatra
- Hasta
- Sunrise – Sunset
- 6:05 AM – 6:55 PM
- Abhijit Muhurta
- 12:04 PM – 12:55 PM
Festival · 2099
Nag Panchami 2099
Falls on 20 August 2099 in Ujjain, as computed from the real sky for that city.
The portal of Festivals
Today's three riddles
Turn a card. Answer all three rightly and this portal is sealed in your sky. New riddles every morning.
Wishing you a blessed Nag Panchami
May you see the one life in every creature, and may every creature be safe near you.
यस्तु सर्वाणि भूतानि आत्मन्येवानुपश्यति । सर्वभूतेषु चात्मानं ततो न विजुगुप्सते ॥
yastu sarvāṇi bhūtāni ātmanyevānupaśyati sarvabhūteṣu cātmānaṁ tato na vijugupsate
Its meaning
But one who sees all beings in the Self alone, and the Self in all beings, from then on shrinks from nothing.
Īśa Upaniṣad 6
When, for Ujjain
20 August 2099
Shukla Panchami · until 10:15 PM
Do
Feed an animal on your street that nobody feeds, and leave water where it can reach it.
Leave aside
Forcing milk on captive snakes. Reverence leaves the creature free.
Send this as your wish
Add your name. The card goes as a picture they can read and keep, and the link with it opens as your wish, with the timing for their own city, the verse, and how to keep the day.
Wishing you a blessed Nag Panchami
Keep the festival year in your calendar
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Never miss a festival
A gentle reminder three days before each festival and on its morning, with its timing for your city.
In 26,607 days
The sky that day
- The Moon
- Shukla Panchami
- The Sun is in
- Simha
- The Moon is in
- Kanya, in Hasta
The Moon is five days past new and waxing, in Shravana, the heart of the rains, when water fills the burrows and the snakes come up among people.
What the day is
The serpents honoured — the tradition's oldest ecological instinct, protecting the creature everyone else kills.
The story
3 stories the day keeps. Turn each card.
1 / 3Krishna and KaliyaTurn ↻
The serpent Kaliya had poisoned a pool of the Yamuna, and nothing could drink from it. The boy Krishna leapt in and danced on his hoods until Kaliya yielded. Then, at the plea of Kaliya's family, Krishna spared him and sent him back to the sea, and the river ran clean again. The victory ends in mercy, not in killing.
Bhagavata Purana 10.16.
2 / 3Astika stops the sacrificeTurn ↻
King Janamejaya, grieving his father, lit a great fire to destroy every serpent in the world. A young sage, Astika, came to the sacrifice, praised the king, and asked one gift: that it stop. The king kept his word, and the serpents were saved. The tradition remembers this rescue on Naga Panchami.
The sacrifice: Mahabharata, Adi Parva. Its link to this day: the living tradition.
3 / 3Shesha holds the worldTurn ↻
Vishnu rests on Shesha, the serpent whose coils are endless, and Shesha is said to bear the earth on his hoods. The creature people most often fear is, in the tradition's own picture, the one that holds everything up.
Vishnu Purana; Bhagavata Purana, Fifth Canto.
The days around it
3 days kept as one season. Each has its own page.
What is said, and what is so
Often said
Snakes should be fed milk today.
The root
Snakes cannot digest milk, and a captured snake forced to drink it often dies. The offering of milk belongs to the image: the clay or painted naga, the anthill, the stone under the tree. Reverence that harms the creature is not reverence.
Often said
A serpent fault in the chart must be removed with a costly puja.
The root
The classical Jyotish texts do not name such a fault, and no snake, real or drawn in a chart, asks for money. What this day asks is free: protect a living thing others would kill, and keep the earth around you safe for it.
How to keep Nag Panchami
Free acts, done by you. Kept so far this year: 0 of 3.
Feed an animal on your street that nobody feeds, and leave water where it can reach it.
Set out a shallow bowl of clean water and a little grain for the birds, somewhere a cat cannot wait beside it.
Read the story of Krishna and Kaliya aloud, and notice that it ends with the serpent spared.
Each act is free and done by you. Keeping one writes it to your karma ledger with the day's panchang. Nothing here is ever bought, and no act is a remedy.
The family's part
The youngest
Draws a naga with rice flour or turmeric at the door, and learns that a snake left alone will leave us alone.
The eldest
Tells how the snakes of their village were kept: the anthill, the grove, the field not ploughed today.
Everyone
Each person names one creature they will protect this year, and one small way they will do it.
How India keeps it
Maharashtra
Images of the naga in clay, or painted on the wall, are worshipped at home with milk, flowers and puffed grain. Where live cobras were once handled, images now take their place, kinder to the snake.
Karnataka
Nagara Panchami: sisters pour milk on the anthill, the snake's house, and pray for the wellbeing of their brothers.
Kerala
Sacred serpent groves, the sarpa kavu, are kept wild and uncut beside old family homes. The reverence for the snake protects the whole forest around it.
Bengal and Assam
Manasa, the serpent goddess, is worshipped through the rainy months, and her songs tell of a mother who guards her devotees from harm.
The day, for Ujjain
The day is chosen by the moment the tradition reads its tithi at, and the times are that day's own, computed for this city. A festival-specific puja window is not printed: those rules differ by tradition and await a scholar's review.
For another city
The stories, their sources and the regional customs on this page await a scholar's review. The sky and the dates are computed for your city.