Pitru Paksha (Mahalaya Paksha)

When it falls

Pitru Paksha (Mahalaya Paksha) 2026 is under way: it began on Sunday, 27 September 2026 and runs to Saturday, 10 October 2026.See this day's panchangam

Masa (amanta)

Bhadrapada (Ashwina in purnimanta)

Tithi

Krishna Padyami – Amavasya

Duration

The whole krishna paksha of Bhadrapada — fourteen to sixteen days

Observed in

All of India; kept most fully in the Telugu states, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Bengal

Significance

Pitru Paksha is the dark fortnight of Bhadrapada, and it belongs to the dead. From the day after the full moon until the new moon that closes the month, the ancestors — pitrus — are held to descend and stay near their families, and the living feed them: with water and sesame at the river in the morning, with rice balls on the tithi of a parent's death, and with a meal set out for whoever comes, human or crow. Every other festival in the calendar celebrates something. This fortnight remembers.

The tradition is built on the idea of pitru rina, the debt to the ancestors — one of the three debts a person is born carrying, alongside the debt to the sages and the debt to the gods. It is discharged by remembering the dead by name and gotra, by feeding them, and by continuing the line. Shraddha, the rite of the fortnight, means simply 'that which is done with faith', and the texts are insistent that the faith matters more than the scale: water and sesame offered by someone who has nothing are as complete as a feast.

The fortnight is kept quietly. No weddings are fixed in it, no house is entered for the first time, no business is opened, and many families do not buy anything new. This is often explained as the fortnight being inauspicious, which is not quite right. It is not that the days are bad; it is that they are spoken for. The living put their own beginnings aside for two weeks because the time has been given to someone else — and the day after it ends, with Ashwin's new moon behind them, the same families begin Navaratri.

When it falls, and why

Pitru Paksha runs from krishna pratipada to amavasya of Bhadrapada in the amanta calendar the Telugu states, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu follow. North Indian calendars, which count months from full moon to full moon, call the same fortnight Ashwin krishna paksha — the days are identical, only the month's name differs, and a Hindi almanac saying 'Ashwin' and a Telugu one saying 'Bhadrapada' are describing the same sixteen mornings. Because the lunar month drifts against the Gregorian calendar, the fortnight moves between early September and mid-October from year to year.

The rule that decides which day a particular shraddha falls on is the one readers most often get wrong, because it is not the sunrise rule the rest of the panchangam uses. Shraddha is performed by the tithi that prevails in aparahna — the fourth of the five parts of daylight, roughly the middle of the afternoon. A tithi that begins at eleven in the morning and ends the next morning is 'today's' tithi for shraddha purposes even though the panchangam's headline, read at sunrise, names the one before it. Every date page on this site prints the aparahna tithi separately for exactly this reason. Mahalaya Amavasya, the last day, is the shraddha for everyone at once — those whose tithi is not known, those who died without heirs, and those the family has simply lost track of.

Pooja vidhanam, step by step

1. 1

   Know the tithi

   Find the tithi on which the parent or grandparent died — not the date, the tithi. Their shraddha falls on the day that tithi prevails in aparahna during the fortnight. If the tithi is not known, or the death was in an intercalary month, perform it on Mahalaya Amavasya.

2. 2

   Bathe, and face south

   Bathe in the morning, in a river or tank where possible, and wear fresh, unstitched cloth. The rites for the ancestors are performed facing south — the direction of Yama and of the departed — with the sacred thread worn over the right shoulder and under the left arm, the reverse of its ordinary position. This is apasavya, and the tradition is exact about it: it marks everything that follows as belonging to the dead rather than the gods.

3. 3

   Take the sankalpa

   State the intention, naming the day, the fortnight and the ancestor by name and gotra, and by relationship — father, father's father, father's grandfather; and the same on the mother's side. Three generations on each side are the traditional count.

4. 4

   Offer tarpana

   Tarpana is the offering of water. Take water in the cupped right hand with black sesame and a blade of darbha grass, and let it fall from the base of the thumb — the pitru tirtha, the part of the hand that belongs to the ancestors — while saying the name and 'tripyatam', 'may they be satisfied'. Three times for each ancestor named. It is done daily through the fortnight by many families, and at minimum on the shraddha tithi and on Mahalaya Amavasya.

5. 5

   Offer pinda

   On the shraddha tithi itself, cooked rice is shaped into balls — pinda — mixed with sesame, ghee and honey, and set on darbha grass facing south, one for each ancestor named. Water is offered to each. Afterwards the pinda are given to the river, to a cow, or left for the crows.

6. 6

   Feed

   The meal is the centre of the rite. Traditionally brahmins are invited and fed in the ancestors' name; where that is not possible, feed anyone who is hungry. Before anyone eats, a portion is set out for the crow — kaka bali — and the crow's arrival is taken as the ancestors accepting the food. A portion for a cow and one for a dog complete the older form of the offering.

7. 7

   Mahalaya Amavasya

   On the new moon that closes the fortnight, repeat tarpana for every ancestor together, named and unnamed, on both sides. This is the day for everyone the fortnight has not yet reached, and the one day most families keep even when they keep nothing else in it.

Samagri checklist

What to gather beforehand. Where something is not available, offer what you have — the intention carries.

• Black sesame (nuvvulu)
• Darbha grass (kusa)
• Water in a clean vessel; river or tank water where possible
• Cooked rice for pinda; ghee; honey
• Banana leaf or a clean plate for the offering
• Unstitched cloth (dhoti, angavastram)
• Tulasi leaves
• Uncooked rice and dal for the brahmin's dakshina
• Food for the meal — cooked without onion or garlic, sattvic
• A lamp, and camphor for arati at the close

The vrat katha

The story told for the fortnight is Karna's. When the great warrior of the Mahabharata died and rose to the heavens, he was given gold and jewels to eat, and nothing else. He asked why, and Indra told him: in his life he had given away gold without limit — his charity was proverbial — but he had never once offered food to his ancestors, because he had not known who they were. The dead are fed by their descendants, and Karna, raised by a charioteer, had fed no one.

Karna asked for a chance to make it right, and was allowed to return to the earth for fifteen days. He spent them feeding the ancestors — his own, once he knew them, and everyone else's — and offering water and sesame in their names. The fifteen days he was given are Pitru Paksha, and the fortnight is sometimes called Mahalaya, the great dwelling, for the time the ancestors dwell close.

The story is told less for Karna than for its point: that a person can give away everything and still owe the one debt that only remembrance pays. That is why the rite is shraddha — faith — and why the texts say the water offered by a poor man's hand is as complete as a rich man's feast.

How it differs by region

• In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana the fortnight is Mahalaya Paksham and the daily tarpanam at the river is widely kept; the shraddha itself falls on the parent's tithi, and Mahalaya Amavasya — often just 'Pitru Amavasya' — is the day every household observes. Certain tithis carry their own rites: Bharani for those who died in the past year, Madhyashtami on the eighth, and Avidhava Navami on the ninth for women who died before their husbands.
• In Tamil Nadu it is Mahalaya Paksham likewise, with Mahalaya Amavasai drawing enormous crowds to Rameswaram and to the sea at Marina and Mahabalipuram for tarpanam at dawn.
• In Bengal the fortnight closes with Mahalaya, the dawn on which the goddess is invoked — the radio recitation of the Chandi that has opened Durga Puja since the 1930s is a Mahalaya morning tradition — and tarpan is offered on the Ganga before it.
• In Maharashtra and Gujarat the shraddha is kept on the tithi and the last day is Sarvapitri Amavasya, the amavasya for all the ancestors. In the north the fortnight is Kanagat or Shraddh Paksha and, in the purnimanta reckoning, is counted as Ashwin krishna rather than Bhadrapada — the same days under another month's name.

Common questions

Watch