Sankranti
The Sun's entry into a sidereal sign.
Twelve a year. Makar Sankranti is the best known, but each has its own punya kala for bathing and charity, reckoned in ghatis around the instant. Because these are solar, they hold nearly fixed civil dates.
What Sankranti governs
These are fixed by the moment the Sun enters a new rashi, not by a tithi — which is why they fall on nearly the same civil date every year.
- Baisakhi The Punjab harvest festival and the day the Khalsa was founded. Gurdwaras hold the Akhand Path and nagar kirtan; in the fields it is the day the rabi harvest is cut, with bhangra and gidda.
- Bohag Bihu The Assamese new year and spring festival, kept over seven days. It opens with Goru Bihu, when cattle are bathed and fed, and continues with the Husori singing rounds, the Bihu dance, and the exchange of the woven gamosa.
- Dhanu Sankranti The opening of the solar month of Dhanu. In Odisha it begins the Dhanu Yatra at Bargarh — an open-air enactment of the Krishna–Kamsa narrative staged across the whole town for eleven days. In Kerala the same period is the Mandala season's heart.
- Makar Sankranti The day the Sun begins its northward course. Observed as a harvest festival across almost the whole subcontinent under a dozen different names, with bathing in rivers, sesame-and-jaggery sweets, charity, and in several regions kite-flying and cattle honouring.
- Poila Boishakh The Bengali new year. Traders open the Haal Khata — the new ledger — with a puja, and customers are invited and fed sweets. Prabhat pheri processions greet the morning; the day is kept as much culturally as religiously.
- Puthandu The Tamil new year. The kanni — the auspicious first sight — is arranged the night before, the year's panchangam is read, and the mangai-pachadi with its six tastes is eaten.
- Raja Parba Odisha's three-day festival of the earth's menstruation. No ploughing, digging or sowing is done; the earth is understood to be resting. Unmarried women swing, wear new clothes, eat poda pitha and do not walk barefoot.
- Thai Pongal The Tamil harvest festival and the second of the four Pongal days. Rice is boiled with new jaggery in a clay pot outdoors until it boils over, and the household calls out Pongalo Pongal as it does.
- Vishu The Kerala new year, and the day of the Vishukkani — the first sight. An arrangement of golden konna blossoms, rice, a mirror, coins, fruit and a Krishna image is set out the night before, and the household is led to it with eyes closed on waking.
- Vishwakarma Puja The day tools, machines and workshops are worshipped. Factories, garages, workshops and studios stop work, clean and garland their equipment, and do not use it for the day.