Sheetala Ashtami or Sheetalasthami is a Hindu festival in honor of the goddess Shitala or Sheetala, celebrated on the eighth day (ashtami) or the third quarter of the Lunar Cycle in the month of Chaitra after the festival of colors, Holi.
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Sheetala Ashtami or Sheetalasthami is a Hindu festival in honor of the goddess Shitala or Sheetala, celebrated on the eighth day (ashtami) or the third quarter of the Lunar Cycle in the month of Chaitra after the festival of colors, Holi.
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What is Sheetala Ashtami in plain words?
Sheetala Ashtami or Sheetalasthami is a Hindu festival in honor of the goddess Shitala or Sheetala, celebrated on the eighth day (ashtami) or the third quarter of the Lunar Cycle in the month of Chaitra after the festival of colors, Holi.
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Cite as: "Sheetala Ashtami." folkroom, https://folkroom.org/art-forms/sheetala-ashtami, text CC BY-SA, with attribution.
Sheetala Ashtami or Sheetalasthami is a Hindu festival in honor of the goddess Shitala or Sheetala, celebrated on the eighth day (ashtami) or the third quarter of the Lunar Cycle in the month of Chaitra after the festival of colors, Holi.
Sheetala Ashtami is celebrated on the eighth day of Krishna Paksha (the waning moon) in the Hindu month of Chaitra, and thus falls eight days after Holi.
The festival falls at the start of the summer season; Shitala is worshipped to ward off heat-borne diseases, such as smallpox, and also to bring prosperity. Observances of the day involve offering to the goddess and consuming only food prepared one or two days before. For this reason, Sheetala Ashtami is referred to in some parts of India as Basora or Basoda, meaning "previous night". Khadi, panchkuta, khichiya, and sweetened rice are foods traditionally offered and consumed. After this day, stale food is not to be eaten.
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Shitala Ashtami”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.
Sheetala Ashtami is This festival of Hindus in which various types of delicious dishes are offered to Mata Sheetla prepared a day before and its priest is a potter, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 1
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