Shitala Shashthi 2012 date

Shitala Shashthi 2012 date is 9 February. Shitala Shashthi often falls on the sixth lunar day of the light half of Magha (3rd of February). This ceremony is of a strictly private character, and is limited to married women having children. The object is, in the present day, especially to protect them from the small-pox. The observance, however, seems to have had originally no such specific application, but to have been intended to secure, generally, the healthiness of infants, by the propitiation of a goddess termed, apparently at the original institution of this rite, Shashthi, but now more commonly Shitala.

Legend behind Shitala Shashthi

According to the legend, the ceremony was instituted by King Priyavrata, in gratitude to Shashthi for restoring his dead son, Suvrata, to life. It should be celebrated on the sixth day of the light fortnight of every month, but this frequent repetition of it has fallen into disuse. Shashthi is said to be so named because she is a sixth part of the goddess Prakriti, but she evidently derives her name from the day of the fortnight of which she is a personification. She is the daughter of Brahma, and wife of Kartikeya, the general of the hosts of heaven, and is to be meditated upon as a female dressed in red garments, riding on a peacock and holding a cock. Shitala, in its ordinary sense, means cold, and is here used as an epithet, in reference, perhaps, to the occasional coolness of the day at this time of the year, as distinguished from the sixth lunar days in other months. The word seems also to have suggested the principal observance on this auspicious occasion of Shitala Shashthi. Cooking on this day is interdicted; victuals must be dressed on, the day preceding, and on this eaten cold. Images of Shashthi are rarely made, but sometimes a small doll represents the goddess, or she is typified by the stone on which condiments are ground. Then is covered with a yellow cloth and placed upon a. platform; or in villages, at the foot of the Indian fig-tree. Fruits and flowers are offered to it, with this prayer, “Oh, Shashthi I as thou art cold, do thou preserve my children in health.”

The worship of Shitala, as identical with Shashthi, seems to be retained only in Bengal, upon this day; the sun is worshipped with fasting and prayers, and with offerings of Akand or Mandara leaves, whence it is called the MandaraShitala Shashthi.