Vasant Panchami
festival
Vasant Panchami, also rendered Basant Panchami and Saraswati Puja in honour of the Hindu goddess Saraswati, is a Hindu festival that marks the preparation for the arrival of spring. It is celebrated during the fifth day (Panchami) in the bright fortnight (Shukla Paksha) of the month of Magha between January and February every year of the Hindu lunar year.
Vasant Panchami also marks the start of preparation for Holika and Holi, which take place forty days later. The Vasant Utsava (festival) on Panchami is celebrated forty days before spring, because any season's transition period is 40 days, and after that, the season comes into full bloom.
Nomenclature and date
Vasant Panchami is celebrated every year on the fifth day of the bright half of the Hindu lunisolar calendar month of Magha, which typically falls in late January or February. Spring is known as the "King of all Seasons", so the festival commences forty days in advance. On Vasant Panchami, the weather is generally winter-like in northern India and more spring-like in central and western regions, supporting the belief that spring reaches its peak forty days after the festival.
The festival is particularly observed by Hindus in the Indian subcontinent, notably India and Nepal. In southern states, the same day is called Sri Panchami.
On the island of Bali and the Hindus of Indonesia, it is known as "Hari Raya Saraswati" (great day of Saraswati).
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This entry incorporates text from “Vasant Panchami” 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.