Maha Shivaratri 2029

Maha Shivaratri is the great night of Shiva — observed on the Chaturdashi of the dark fortnight of Phalguna — and several Puranas gather different acts of Shiva onto it.

The Shiva Purana places at the centre the marriage of Shiva and Parvati. After Sati ended her body in the fire of Daksha's yajna, Shiva withdrew into a long ascesis on Kailasa. The mountain-king's daughter Parvati performed austerities of equal severity to win him back — fasting through the season, standing on one foot, accepting only fallen leaves and finally not even leaves (Aparna). The gods, knowing the asura Tarakasura could be slain only by a son of Shiva, sent Kamadeva to break the meditation — and Kamadeva was burned, as the Holi tradition recalls. Parvati continued her tapas until Shiva himself relented; he came down from the mountain, accepted her, and at midnight on Phalguna Krishna Chaturdashi the divine wedding was performed by Brahma as the officiating priest. The night vigil of devotees re-enacts the family's wait for the bridegroom's arrival, the offering of bilva-patra recalls what the bridal household offered, and the lighting of every Shivalinga across the land becomes the lighting of every dwaraka along the marriage procession.

A second strand belongs to the Samudra Manthana, told in the Vishnu and Bhagavata Puranas. As devas and asuras churn the milk-ocean, the first thing to rise is not nectar but Halahala — a poison so potent that one drop will end the worlds. The devas flee to Shiva, who takes the poison into his throat and holds it there; Parvati presses his neck so the poison cannot descend into his body and harm the universe within him. The poison stains his throat blue and earns him the name Neelakantha. The night-long vigil, the four praharas of abhisheka, and the offerings of cool milk and water are understood as the universe's own care of Shiva in return — washing the heat of the poison from his throat through the long night.

A third tradition, especially in Kashmiri Shaivism, holds Shivaratri as the night when Shiva first appeared as the infinite jyotirlinga of fire — pillar without beginning or end — that Brahma and Vishnu set out to measure. Brahma flew upward as a swan to find the top; Vishnu burrowed downward as a boar to find the base; both returned exhausted, neither able to reach an end. Vishnu confessed his failure; Brahma lied. Shiva blessed Vishnu with worship across the worlds and cursed Brahma to lose his standing temples — a story that explains why almost no Brahma temples remain. The pillar of fire that neither creator nor preserver could measure is what each Shivalinga is, and the night the pillar appeared is what Maha Shivaratri commemorates.

A fourth, gentler tradition is the story of the hunter who, lost in a forest on this night, climbed a bilva tree above a sleeping tiger and threw down leaves through the night to keep himself awake — leaves which fell, all unknowing, onto a Shivalinga at the base of the tree. The hunter's involuntary all-night vigil and unintentional offering won him liberation; the story teaches that even a sincere accidental act of devotion on this night carries great weight, and is the reason staying awake through the night with simple offerings has been said to equal a year of practice.