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Holi

Hindu spring festival of colors

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ10259
Source-derived summary

Holi (IPA: ['hoːli:, hoːɭiː]) is a major Hindu festival of colours, love and spring. It celebrates the love between the deities Radha and Krishna.

Additionally, the day signifies the triumph of good over evil, as it commemorates the victory of Vishnu as Narasimha over Hiranyakashipu.

Holi originated in ancient Indian subcontinent and is predominantly celebrated in the Indian subcontinent, but has also spread to other regions of Asia and parts of the Western world.

Holi also celebrates the arrival of spring in India and Nepal, the end of winter, and the blossoming of love. It is also an invocation for a good spring harvest season. It lasts for a night and a day, starting on the evening of the Purnima (full moon day) falling on the Hindu calendar month of Phalguna, which falls around the middle of March in the Gregorian calendar.

Names

Holi (Hindi: होली, Gujarati: હોળી, Kannada: ಹೋಳಿ, Marathi: होळी, Nepali: होली, Punjabi: ਹੋਲੀ, Telugu: హోళి, Odia: ହୋଲି) is also known as Dol Jatra ("swing festival") and Bôshonto Utshôb (Bengali: বসন্ত উৎসব) ("spring festival") in Bengal (West Bengal and Bangladesh), Phakua (Assamese: ফাকুৱা) and Dôl Jātrā (Assamese: দ'ল যাত্ৰা) in Assam, Phāgu Pūrṇimā (Nepali: फागु पूर्णिमा) in the hilly region of Nepal, Dola jātra (Odia: ଦୋଳଯାତ୍ରା) in Odisha, Fagua or Phagua (Bhojpuri: 𑂤𑂏𑂳𑂄) in eastern Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, and northwestern Jharkhand, Phagwah or Phagwa (Caribbean Hindustani: पगवा) in the Caribbean (namely Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, and Jamaica), and Phagua (Fiji Hindi: फगुआ) in Fiji.

The main day of the celebration is known as "Holi", "Rangwali Holi", "Dola Purnima", "Dhuleti", "Dhulandi", "Ukuli", "Manjal Kuli", "Yaosang", "Shigmo", "Phagwah", or "Jajiri".

About the festival

Holi is a sacred ancient tradition of Hindus.

Editorial summary

“Holi” enters the record as hindu spring festival of colors. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Holi, Hindu and spring can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 283-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Holi, Hindu and spring.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Holi” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Holi, Hindu and spring provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10259. The Library of Congress control number is sh86002490. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Holi primary sources, Holi archive and Holi research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Holi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.