Janmashtami is on 26? Are You Sure?
Maverick story teller, the author just loves turning around what…
Explore the significance of Janmashtami and the confusion surrounding its dates in 2024. Dive into the spiritual aspects of Krishna’s birth in the Dwapar Yug, the role of nakshatras, and the cultural celebrations seen on social media.
August 25, 2024. Flurry of activities on Facebook. Every other parent who has a boy or girl around the age of four or five is posting pictures of them decked as either Radha or Krishna, and some have even joined with their friend’s or cousin’s children, so that a boy and a girl can be decked up together and photographed together as Radha-Krishna… floral ornaments and even the rare peacock feather on “Krishna’s’ crown for the occasion of Janmashtami.
Sitting at my study “bed”, all around me, the mikes are blaring, with the typical Jasomati maiya se bole nandalala, radha kyun gori, main kyun kala. In the meanwhile, given that the government in its wisdom has declared Monday, July 26, as the day of Janmashtami, most office goers have settled down for a three-day rest and have gone to Mussoorie, Dalhousie or Manali.
Meanwhile, my friend and partner in crime (P-i-C), Somashis Gupta Majumdar has forwarded me this FB message: For all you brilliant people who are posting your son’s picture and writing: “My Kanha / Gopal, hope you realise that of he is Gopal/Kanha, then his Mama is Kansha.”! So that means my brother-in-law, my child’s Mama, is the demonic king Kansa!
But if that is a manner of no-devotional, ‘secular’ way of greetings for Janmashtami, someone somewhere is smiling that mysterious smile he has always smiled after stealing some makkhan. Kanha is smiling because it is his not at all his birthday as yet, not on August 26, 2024.
Mathura is the epicentre of Janmashtami celebrations across the country, and although bhajans and other forms of worship have started from August 9th, the main puja at the main Krishna Mandir, Bankey Bihari Mandir at Mathura shall be held on August 27, not August 26, which is not the correct date for Janmashtami this year. But why?_*_
“Because Krishna was born on the tithi (a minuscule time segment) when the Moon had entered the Rohini Nakshatra. That falls on August 26 at 3.55 am and lasts till the next day, so the actual Janmashtami, the day Krishna was born falls on August 27 this year,” says Satyajit Dutta, a specialist on such matters, especially ancient astrology or Jyotish in India.
Satyajit is not your kind of “Harekrishna” hollering, dhoti-kurta-clad, white markings on the forehead above which lies a tonsured head. He is a very normal young man, a magician and runs the International Academy of Illusion and Magic, a Reiki Master and a numerologist. And he does not hold an all-paid-for Godman’s role in one of those despicable bhakti TV channels.
Satya and I have been friends since 2008, having worked together at The Sunday Indian magazine, so when my P-i-C asked me whether East India Story could do something truly different on Janmashtami, my natural fallback was Satya. I started by asking him some rudimentary questions. Like why is it that Krishna was born in Dwapar Yug and not in Treta or Kali, or why not in Satya Yug?
But what are these Yugs? You don’t know? Funny… even AI knows this… ask it!
The Yugs are four epochs, which according to Sanatan Dharm, have four distinctive characteristics and move in cycles: Satya, Treta, Dwapar and Kali. In very simple terms, each epoch is marked by the level of moral, intellectual and spiritual quality of a majority of those who live during those epochs.
Starting with Satya Yug, when most of the people were pure and connected to the eternal Consciousness, or following a strict moral code, through Treta, when the Rajasik or arrogant aspects in humans rise, followed by Dwapar, when the more gross Tamasik, or lower and negative energies hold sway over the universe, and finally Kaliyug, which is the epoch of total darkness and confusion, which is now, the phase we are suffering and thinking that money power is everything.
“So Lord Krishna decided to be born in Dwapar Yug, and presided over the transition to Kaliyug,” said Dutta. But why?
“In Dwapar, he was born to release the knowledge and divine orientation that would be necessary for honest, morally upright people to lead them back to the Satya Yug, a senior Brahmakumari practitioner had explained to me.
***
But my P-i-C and I are in a tizzy, because this sounds like so much bunkum in the age of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and AI taking over human intellect: the age of moral subjugation to money power!
It is not. And I’ll tell you why. Take the term EPOCH. It is not as if some Indian religious humbugs have invented the term. As I said, there are time periods… and what does Google-Baba say? “Medieval Latin, from Greek epochē, meaning “cessation” or “fixed point.” “Epochē,” in turn, comes from the Greek verb epechein, meaning “to pause” or “to hold back.” When “epoch” was first borrowed into English, it referred to the fixed point used to mark the beginning of a system of chronology.”
Hence, Satya, Treta, Dwapar, Kali are epochs. Fixed points. Cessation of a chronological system. As Satyajit explained: “In very simple terms it is the battle between the divine and the devil. And in each Yug, people had their distinct levels of connection with the divine, or that Supreme Consciousness. In Dwapar Yug the main aspect is not the moral, or soul construct, but rather, the mind. And in Kali, it is darkness and confusion.”
He continues: “In Indian Jyotish, we say that there are planetary systems that mark an epoch, and in Kali, the epoch of the mind, the dominant aspect is the Moon, or Chandra. The mind is the connection between the self and the soul. But the self…our likes and luxuries, or sexual cravings and lust for wealth, is being driven by the mind.
“In the previous epoch, Treta, the dominant aspect was the soul, which is why in that epoch, Treta, the avatar of Vishnu was Rama. But Rama was Suryavanshi, the dominant planetary system was ruled by the Sun. But in Dwapar the dominant aspect was the mind, whose ruling deity is the moon. That is why Krishna was born in Dwapar Yug. Because the final lesson of Krishna is that if you can understand your own mind, you can do anything.”
I ask Satya, is that is why Krishna revealed the Geeta, so that Arjun could understand his mind and go into a war that his confused mind was refusing to go into? Satya says that that is a very complex discussion, but that is largely true. So then I asked him to go into the issue of Janmashtami and Krishna’s birth: the centre of our concern right now: why Ashtami? Why not Shashthi, Saptami or Navami, the sixth, seventh, or ninth day of the waning moon?
Satya explains: “Krishna was born as a link between your body and your soul. Krishna had arrived to make us aware of the mind, our mood swings, all such phases of the mind. He was released from the universe so that he could teach people how to transcend your mind, emotions and mood swings.”
***
That is fine, I said and asked, why the tithi Ashtami? “Satya says: “Ashtami is ruled by the deity Durga. At that point three energies were released. One is the Lhadini, the second was the Maya energy, and the third energy was the Durga energy. Lhadini is basically the energy of bliss. Durga is the deity of the Ashtami tithi, the eighth day of either the waxing or waning moon.
“The story of how Kansa, the demonic king tried to kill Durga and how she slipped and fell from his hands and had warned Kansa that I am not the real one who will be your nemesis. He is someone else. She created the protective shield around Krishna to be born on Ashtami. So, Ma Durga was sent ahead of Krishna to be protected when he is born on the eighth day so that he can help people handle the tamasic, negative aspects of the world during Dwapar and then Kali.”
But that too did not end my query: “You had said that Krishna was born under the Rohimi nakshatra.”
“A nakshtra is basically a constellation in terms of modern science, but in which one star is dominant,” says Satya. “The dominant aspect of Rohini Nakshatra is the moon. So what people generally celebrate Ashtami as Krishna’s time of birth… this is a misnomer. Ashtami is not important. What is important is when Moon enters the Rohini constellation. Ashtami is a date issued by a government but has got nothing to do with the exact time of the birth of Krishna.
“So if you look at it, Lord Krishna chose the time when moon enters the Rohini Nakshatra, to be born, so that he becomes the one to open the mind, the basic aspect of Moon. It is so scientific. Even the Nakshatra is not a complete entity. Each Nakshatra is divided into segments. Which is three degrees-twenty minutes per unit. (Note, these are not time units but axial units of planets).
“So,” Satya ends, “it is not any given date by a government that will mark Janmashtami. The crucial thing is when Moon enters the Rohini nakshatra, and even beyond the time, the time of Moon entering is not the real time of birth. The real moment of Krishna’s birth is when the night on which the Moon enters the Rohini Nakshatra merges with dawn.
“And this is why only the priests of Mathura, where Krishna was born, know the actual time of celebrating Krishna’s birth. The rest of it is governmentese,” Satya added.
***
So all Ye fathers and mothers who have been wanting their sons to be shown in Facebook as Gopal, let me ask you just one thing. Will you go by a new form of birth of Krishna-in Archies, Apple/iTunes, Amazon, Sephora, Google Play, and American Express gift cards, just going by the wrong concepts of the birth of Krishna? Or are you going to try to sense what the essence is?
What my C-i-C, Somashis’ FB post shows is that we are fast sliding down the Archies’ pattern of commercialisation of an epochal event: The birth of Krishna in the Dwapar Yug and what it means for us in the Kaliyug?
Let each of us answer it for ourselves!
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Maverick story teller, the author just loves turning around what people write into stories.He has worked with several magazines, such as Sunday Mail, Mail Today, Debonair, The Sunday Indian, Down To Earth, IANS, www.sportzpower.com, www.indiantelevision.com etc. He also loves singing and cooking