Festivals

Maha Saptami 2023: Date, History, Facts about Durga Puja

India celebrates the 10-day Durga Puja festival with great zeal and fervour. Saptami means'seven' in Sanskrit, and Maha Saptami is day seven of this festival.

Maha Saptami 2023: Date, History, Facts about Maa Durga

Every year, Maha Saptami is observed on the seventh day of the waxing moon, known as ‘Shukla Paksha’, in the Hindu calendar month of ‘Ashwin,’ which falls on October 21 this year. The Great Ceremony (Maha Puja) begins on Maha Saptami. Durga Puja is a Hindu festival that is celebrated with great pomp and circumstance and honours the 10-armed deity and her victory over the evil buffalo demon ‘Mahishasura.’

The background of Maha Saptami

India celebrates the 10-day Durga Puja festival with great zeal and fervour. Saptami means’seven’ in Sanskrit, and Maha Saptami is day seven of this festival. On Maha Saptami, the Maha Puja of the Durga Puja commences. According to legend, the battle between deity Durga and the demon king Mahishasura began on this day and concluded on Vijaya Dashami, the tenth and final day of the Durga Puja festival, with the deity triumphing over the demon.

There is another legend surrounding this day’s commemoration. Before his combat with the demon king Ravana, who had abducted his wife Sita, it is believed that Lord Rama prayed to the goddess Durga. This ritual required one hundred blue lotus flowers, but Lord Rama could only discover 99. To complete the puja, he sacrificed his own blue eye to the goddess in lieu of the missing lotus. This devotion pleased the goddess Durga, who showered him with her favours, which helped him defeat Ravana. This conflict occurred on the seventh day of the month of Ashwin.

Durga Puja is accompanied by traditional rituals, such as the Navapatrika, in which nine plants are immersed in the River Ganges before sunrise. Turmeric, bel, Ashoka, ‘jayanti,’ pomegranate, banana, paddy, colocasia, and arum are these nine plants. The second ritual is the Mahasnan, in which a mirror is given a ritual bath and regarded as the personification of the goddess Durga. The Prana Prathishta is the last ceremony, which entails depositing a vessel with holy water, a coconut cover, and five mango leaves around it in front of the goddess’s statue and then chanting religious hymns. In the end, the deity is worshipped with sixteen unique objects.

Maha Saptami 2023 Messages And Status

Five important facts bout Durga Puja

Maha Saptami marks the beginning of Durga Puja.

The Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Odisha, and Sikkim commemorate Durga Puja to a great extent.

Rituals Maha Saptami has three major rituals: the ritual of bathing nine plants, the ritual of bathing the mirror that reflects deity Durga, and the ritual of worshipping the deity with sixteen special objects.

Nabapatrika is a ritual in which nine distinct leaves, which are believed to depict the nine forms of the goddess, are venerated.

Goddess Kali is also known as Kalratri, which is another manifestation of Goddess Shakti.