Chhath Puja

• The President and Prime Minister led political leaders in wishing people for Chhath Puja.
• While Chhath has been celebrated in Bihar, parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Nepal for centuries, over the past decade or so, it has become a lot more visible across the country.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

• Chhath Puja is a four-day elaborate celebration in honour of the Sun.
• Chhath is a festival that epitomises religiosity in Bihar.
• While only some people observe the fast, the entire community gets involved in making the festival a success — cleaning river banks and the roads leading up to those banks, gathering all the little things needed for the rituals, and preparing thekuas, the prasad for the festival which is now synonymous with Bihari cuisine.
• The festivities include
  • The first day of the festival is called naha kha, where those observing it take a meal (khana) only after a ceremonial bath in a river, a pond, or the sea (nahana).
  • The second day is called kharna, on which the one observing the fast takes only one meal in the evening, of roti and kheer (rice pudding).
  • After the roti-kheer meal begins a 36-hour fast, during which devotees don’t even drink water.
  • On the third day, devotees go to the banks of a water body whose banks are decorated with diyas, rangoli, and sugarcane stalks.
  • All the offerings to the God — seasonal fruits like sweet potato, water chestnuts, pomelo, banana — are placed in soops (cane baskets) along with diyas. As the Sun sets, the person fasting raises the soop to it as an offering (arghya).
    • This is called the Sanjh ka Arghya, or the evening offering.
  • The next day, the same ritual is conducted at dawn, for the rising Sun, called the Bhor ka Arghya.