The vrat the setting sun receives

Most Hindu worship faces the rising sun. Once a year, on the sixth day of the bright fortnight of Kartik, lakhs of families walk to a river, a pond, or an improvised ghat in the evening — and offer their first arghya (अर्घ्य, the ritual water offering) to the sun as it sets. That inversion is the signature of Chhath, and it is not an accident: the parva honors the whole circuit of the sun’s giving, thanking the light for what it has already given before asking anything of what comes next.

Chhath — also called Surya Shashthi (सूर्य षष्ठी, “the sixth day of Surya”) and Dala Chhath in Bhojpuri homes — is the great festival of Bihar, Jharkhand, and eastern Uttar Pradesh, kept with equal intensity in Delhi, Mumbai, and every city the diaspora has reached. It is addressed to two beings together: Surya, the visible sun, and Chhathi Maiya, the mother-goddess of the sixth day, protector of children and family welfare.

And it has a second signature, just as striking: no priest is required. The vrati (व्रती — the one who keeps the vrat, most often a mother or grandmother, and in many families a man) leads the entire observance. The family carries the baskets, holds the milk, steadies the vrati in the water — Chhath is a household liturgy performed in public, shoulder to shoulder with every other household at the ghat.

A note on the calendar: the main Chhath is this Kartik one, six days after Diwali; a quieter Chaiti Chhath is kept in the month of Chaitra (spring) by many families. Everything in this guide applies to both — only the dates change.

Chhath 2026: the four days at a glance

The 2026 dates below are not copied from a listing site — we computed the tithis with the same swisseph-based panchang engine that powers our live Panchang, and cross-checked them against the season’s anchors. Kartik Shukla Shashthi — the sixth tithi that gives Chhath its name — runs from the night of November 14 through the small hours of November 16 (it ends at about 2:01 am IST on the 16th), which places the Sandhya Arghya on Sunday evening, November 15, and the Usha Arghya on the Saptami sunrise of Monday, November 16.

• Day 1 — Nahay Khay (नहाय-खाय, “bathe and eat”): Friday, November 13, 2026 (Kartik Shukla Chaturthi). The vrati bathes — in the river where possible — and eats one pure meal.
• Day 2 — Kharna (खरना): Saturday, November 14, 2026 (Kartik Shukla Panchami). A day-long fast, closed after sunset with gur ki kheer and roti; the nirjala vrat begins after this meal.
• Day 3 — Sandhya Arghya (संध्या अर्घ्य): Sunday, November 15, 2026 (Kartik Shukla Shashthi). The evening at the ghat; the arghya to the setting sun.
• Day 4 — Usha Arghya (उषा अर्घ्य) and Parana: Monday, November 16, 2026 (Saptami sunrise). The arghya to the rising sun, after which the vrati breaks the fast.

Your city’s arghya moments, to the minute

Chhath’s two central moments are defined entirely by your local sun. The Sandhya Arghya is offered as the sun sets on November 15; the Usha Arghya as it rises on November 16. There is no muhurat table to consult beyond this: the sun over your own ghat is the timekeeper.

Computed with our panchang engine for the city center (allow a minute or two for your exact locality and horizon):

• Patna — Sandhya Arghya (sunset, Nov 15): 5:01 pm · Usha Arghya (sunrise, Nov 16): 6:07 am
• Delhi — Sandhya Arghya: 5:28 pm · Usha Arghya: 6:44 am
• Kolkata — Sandhya Arghya: 4:53 pm · Usha Arghya: 5:49 am
• Varanasi — Sandhya Arghya: 5:10 pm · Usha Arghya: 6:15 am
• Ranchi — Sandhya Arghya: 5:04 pm · Usha Arghya: 6:03 am
• Lucknow — Sandhya Arghya: 5:16 pm · Usha Arghya: 6:26 am
• Mumbai — Sandhya Arghya: 6:00 pm · Usha Arghya: 6:46 am

Nahay Khay and Kharna: entering the fast by degrees

Chhath does not begin with deprivation — it begins with cleaning. On Nahay Khay (November 13), the vrati bathes, traditionally in the river whose water will receive the arghya; the house and especially the kitchen are scoured; and the vrati eats a single, absolutely satvik meal. The classic plate is kaddu-bhat — bottle-gourd cooked without onion or garlic, arwa (non-parboiled) rice, and chana dal — cooked in a purified kitchen, often on a fresh or freshly cleaned chulha, and served to the vrati before the rest of the household eats. From this meal onward, the vrati’s food and the family kitchen keep to a heightened standard of shuddhata (purity) that lasts until the parva ends.

Kharna (November 14) tightens the circle. The vrati fasts through the day — most keep it without water — and after sunset (about 5:02 pm in Patna, 5:28 pm in Delhi that evening) breaks the day’s fast with the parva’s most beloved meal: rasiao — kheer made with gur (jaggery), never white sugar — with roti, sometimes a banana. It is cooked by the vrati or under their direct care, offered first to Chhathi Maiya, then eaten quietly; in many homes the vrati eats alone, undisturbed, because whatever interrupts the meal ends it.

When that plate is set down, the great fast begins: nothing — no food, no water — until the Usha Arghya parana on the morning of November 16. That is roughly thirty-six hours nirjala. It is among the most demanding observances in the Hindu year, and the tradition treats it with corresponding seriousness: it is entered by degrees (which is exactly what Nahay Khay and Kharna are for), it is kept by choice and by sankalpa (settled intention), and — as with Karva Chauth’s single-day nirjala — a vrati who is pregnant, unwell, elderly, or medically advised keeps a gentler form with water or fruit, and the vrat is not diminished. Chhathi Maiya is worshipped as a protector of families; a fast that harms the family’s own mother contradicts its purpose.

The soop, the daura, and the thekua: getting ready for the ghat

Through the afternoon of Kharna and the morning of the Sandhya Arghya day, the household prepares the offerings. Everything centers on two woven objects: the soop (सूप) — the flat winnowing basket on which the offerings are arranged and with which the arghya is given — and the daura (दउरा), the large bamboo basket in which everything is carried to the ghat, traditionally on the head of a male family member walking barefoot.

The heart of the offering is thekua (ठेकुआ) — a hand-shaped, deep-fried sweet of wheat flour and gur, pressed with a wooden mould. It is made at home, in the purified kitchen, usually by several members of the family working together; for many families this cooking session is Chhath’s equivalent of decorating the tree — the moment the festival becomes physical.

Around the thekua, the soop is filled with the harvest in whole form: fruits offered uncut wherever possible — bananas in whole bunches, whole coconut, seasonal fruit like singhara (water chestnut), ripe sharifa (custard apple), and citrus — plus sugarcane stalks (five are traditional in many households, used to stand a small canopy at the ghat), radish and turmeric with their greens, rice, and a diya. The wholeness is the point: Chhath offers the produce of the earth as it came, before human cutting or refinement — the same instinct that insists on gur over refined sugar.

Sandhya Arghya: the evening of the setting sun

On Sunday, November 15, the household walks to the water — the vrati often barefoot the whole way. City ghats fill hours early; families mark their spot with the sugarcane canopy, arrange the soops, and light diyas as the afternoon fades. The atmosphere is one of Chhath’s gifts: an entire city at the water’s edge, Chhath geet (the folk songs of the parva) moving up and down the bank, no hierarchy of officiants anywhere.

As the sun approaches the horizon, the vrati enters the water — typically waist-deep, facing west — and the family passes the soops one by one. Each is raised toward the setting sun, milk and water are poured over its front edge in a slow arc (the arghya itself), and the soop returns to a family member’s hands. The vrati usually turns a full slow circle with each offering. When the last light goes, the family gathers the soops and returns home; in many households the night is kept wakeful, with the vrati resting near the puja space, and in some traditions a kosi bharai — an arrangement of lit diyas under the sugarcane canopy — is kept at home or at the ghat that night, often in fulfilment of a specific mannat (vow).

If you cannot enter the water — age, health, a crowded urban ghat — standing at the water’s edge, or in a large tub of clean water, is an accepted form. The offering is the arghya toward the sun; the river receives it, it does not gatekeep it.

Usha Arghya and parana: the morning that ends it

Before dawn on Monday, November 16 — sunrise is 6:07 am in Patna, 6:44 am in Delhi — the family returns to the same ghat in the dark. The scene repeats in mirror image: the vrati in the water facing east, the soops raised one by one to the rising sun, the arghya poured as the disc clears the horizon. The Shashthi tithi has by now passed into Saptami, exactly as the tradition wants it: the evening arghya belongs to the sixth, the morning arghya to the seventh.

After the final offering comes the parana (पारण) — the formal breaking of the fast. The vrati typically takes the first food at the ghat itself: a piece of thekua, a sip of kachcha dudh (raw milk) or water, sometimes ginger with gur — customs vary by family. The prasad is then distributed generously; asking for and receiving Chhath prasad — a thekua pressed into your palm by a stranger’s grandmother — is one of the parva’s universal experiences, extended to every passerby regardless of caste, class, or faith.

The household then comes home to its first ordinary meal in four days, and the parva is complete. Many families mark the vrati’s achievement with feet-touching and blessings — the vrati has carried the whole household’s prayer for thirty-six hours, and everyone knows it.

Chhathi Maiya, Surya, and why the setting sun comes first

Who is Chhathi Maiya? The name means simply “Mother of the Sixth” — the goddess of the sixth tithi. The tradition identifies her with Shashthi (षष्ठी), the ancient protector-goddess of children and childbirth, worshipped across India on the sixth day after a birth (the chhathi ceremony many families keep for newborns is the same goddess at work). In the Puranic stream — the Brahmavaivarta Purana most prominently — Shashthi is honored as Devasena, a mother-goddess who guards children; in the folk theology of the parva she is addressed as Surya’s sister, and the vrat approaches the fierce sun through the tenderness of the sister who can ask him anything. These layers are not competing claims but the tradition’s usual way of holding one truth in several registers: the power that protects children is asked, once a year, to protect the whole family.

The stories the vrat tells come from several sources, and honesty requires naming them. The Mahabharata remembers Karna — son of Surya and king of Anga, today’s Bhagalpur region of Bihar — standing waist-deep in water offering arghya to the sun daily; the parva’s central posture is his. Regional tradition holds that Draupadi and the Pandavas kept the Surya Shashthi vrat on Dhaumya’s counsel during their exile, and that Sita offered this worship on the Ganga at Munger during the exile years — both living traditions of the vrat’s own katha, told at ghats and in family recitations rather than in a single canonical text. And the vrat katha most widely recited — the childless king Priyavrata, whose line is restored by Shashthi Devi — is the oral scripture of the observance itself, carried the way Karva Chauth’s kathas are carried: by memory, with loving regional variation.

And the setting sun? The tradition’s own explanation is characteristically generous: gratitude is owed first. The evening arghya thanks the sun for the day, the year, the harvest already given — honoring the giver in his decline, when every other tradition of worship has gone home — and only then does the morning arghya greet him renewed and ask for what comes next. Families who have lost much in a year often say the Sandhya Arghya is the part of Chhath that understands them. It is the calendar’s annual lesson that reverence does not depend on brightness.

Keeping Chhath outside Bihar — or outside India

Chhath has traveled with every wave of migration, and the tradition has always adapted its geography without diluting its form. What is fixed: the four days, the fast’s structure, the two arghyas at your local sunset and sunrise, the purity of the kitchen, the offerings in whole form. What is flexible: the water.

In Indian cities away from the great rivers, municipal ponds, lakes, and purpose-built artificial ghats serve fully. Abroad — or where November water is dangerously cold — families keep the arghya at any clean accessible water: a lakeshore or beach where local rules allow, a garden, terrace, or courtyard with a large tub or an inflatable pool the vrati can stand in or beside. The soop is raised to the same sun; the arghya is poured toward it; nothing essential is lost. Dress for the cold, keep the vrati’s safety first, and let the diya do the work the Ganga’s evening light would have done.

Two practical cautions from experience. First, timing: the arghya follows your local sun, not IST — a family in New Jersey offers the Sandhya Arghya at New Jersey’s sunset. Our guide to using the Panchang across time zones covers this in depth, and the live Panchang computes sunrise and sunset for any city. Second, thekua: gur and arwa rice are stocked by most Indian groceries abroad in the Diwali–Chhath season — buy early, because the entire diaspora is buying the same week. If a mould is unavailable, thekua pressed with a fork or shaped by hand is exactly as acceptable; the vrat has never graded artwork.

For the wider season around the parva — Diwali’s five days that end six days before Chhath begins, and every major festival of the year with its dates — keep the Festival Calendar 2026 at hand, and add the four days to your calendar so the season does not arrive unannounced.

Honest questions, honest answers

• Can someone keep Chhath for the first time? Yes — the vrat is taken up by sankalpa, often after a mannat (a vow made in prayer). The tradition’s one firm expectation is continuity: Chhath, once taken up, is kept yearly where health allows, and is often passed down within the family — which is why the decision is made seriously.
• Do men keep the vrat? Yes. The majority of vratis are women, but men keep the full vrat in many families — the fast, the water, the arghyas — and the rest of the household’s supporting role is identical.
• Is the nirjala absolute? The classical form is, from after Kharna to the morning parana. The tradition’s own practice — visible at any ghat — is that children, the elderly, the unwell, and expectant mothers do not keep nirjala, and a vrati in difficulty takes water without the vrat being “broken.” The parva’s deity protects families; she is not honored by collapse.
• What if there is genuinely no water body? A tub or any clean vessel of water the vrati can stand beside serves. The ghat is the parva’s theatre, not its precondition.
• What if it is cloudy and the sun cannot be seen? The arghya is offered at the computed sunset or sunrise moment toward the sun’s position. The sun does not need to be visible to be present — the panchang, not the weather, sets the moment.
• Is Chhath a “Bihari festival”? It is the festival of a region the way the Ganga is a river of a region — that is where it runs deepest, and it belongs to everyone it reaches. Ghats from Delhi to New Jersey answer the question every November.

Going deeper

Chhath closes the great autumn arc that begins with the ancestors and ends at the water’s edge. These are the most useful threads to follow from here.

• The festival season’s spine, in order: Pitru Paksha (Sep 26 – Oct 10), Navratri (Oct 11–19), Karva Chauth (Oct 29), Diwali’s five days (Nov 6–10), and Chhath (Nov 13–16).
• For the anatomy of sunrise, sunset, and the tithis that anchored every date in this guide — the five limbs of the Panchang — see Finding the right muhurat.
• For keeping any of these observances across time zones, see How Indian families abroad can use the Panchang.
• For today’s sunrise, sunset, and tithi in your own city — the numbers this whole parva runs on — open the live Panchang.
• For every 2026 festival date on one page, engine-computed, see the Festival Calendar 2026.