Dīpāvali

Lamps on the darkest night

Drawing on the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Canto 10), and the Purāṇic tradition of Lakṣmī.

Dīpāvali — "a row of lamps" — falls on the new moon of Kārtika, the darkest night of the dark fortnight, and the whole festival is the answer the lamps make to that darkness. Three great traditions meet on it, north and south and west, and they are not rivals but facets of one meaning: light returning after the worst.

The return of Rāma. In the north it is above all the night Rāma came home to Ayodhyā — after fourteen years of exile, after the war in Laṅkā and the fall of Rāvaṇa, restored at last with Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa. The Rāmāyaṇa tells how the city, in joy, lit every lamp it had to guide its rightful king back through the new-moon dark and crown him. Every Dīwālī lamp since is one of Ayodhyā's: the light a people put out to welcome home what they had lost.

The fall of Naraka. In the south and west, the festival's eve is Naraka Caturdaśī — the day Kṛṣṇa (with Satyabhāmā) killed the tyrant Narakāsura, who had seized the earth and imprisoned sixteen thousand women. With his death the captives were freed and the oppressed worlds could breathe; the lamps and the dawn oil-bath of the south celebrate that release. The Bhāgavata carries the account in its tenth canto.

The rising of Lakṣmī. And it is the night of Lakṣmī — goddess of fortune, who rose from the churning of the ocean of milk, and who is held to walk abroad on this new-moon night and enter the homes that are clean, lit, and open to her. So the Lakṣmī Pūjā at dusk is the festival's still centre: the house swept and lit and the goddess of abundance invited in.

One darkness, three deliverances — a king restored, a tyrant fallen, fortune entering the door — and a single response: light, deliberately made, against the longest dark of the lunar month.

What is done, and why

The house is cleaned and whitewashed, raṅgolī laid at the threshold, and at dusk rows of lamps lit along every ledge and step and window. Lakṣmī Pūjā is performed in the evening, in the pradoṣa hour, when the amāvāsyā is present at dusk. The five days run Dhanteras, Naraka Caturdaśī, Lakṣmī Pūjā (Dīpāvali), Govardhana / Annakūṭa, and Bhāī Dūj.

How it is kept — at dusk

Dīpāvali is the Kārtika Amāvāsyā (new moon), and the Lakṣmī Pūjā is reckoned in the pradoṣa kāla, when the amāvāsyā tithi prevails after sunset — the lamps lit into the dusk, not at sunrise.

Why it is kept

Dīpāvali puts a deliberate, human light against the year's darkest night — and tells three stories of why that is not naïve. The king did come home; the tyrant did fall; fortune does enter the house that is ready for her. The lamp is not pretending the dark away. It is the practiced confidence that light returns, and the choice to set it out and wait.

Source: Rāma's return is from the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa; the slaying of Narakāsura from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Canto 10 (Chapters 59, vedabase.io); Lakṣmī's rising from the churning of the ocean and the Lakṣmī Pūjā follow Purāṇic tradition.