Chaitra Maas: The Month the Hindu Year Begins

Chaitra is the first month of the Hindu year and the month spring arrives in. The harvest is in, the trees are in new leaf, and the count of years starts again. Two of the country's largest new year celebrations fall on its opening day, the nine nights of Chaitra Navratri run through its first week, and it closes on the full moon that carries the birth of Hanuman.

The Month the Sun Enters Aries

What fixes a lunar month's name is the Sun. Each solar month the Sun enters one sidereal sign, twelve of them in order from Aries, and a lunar month takes the name matching the sign the Sun enters during it. Chaitra is the month the Sun enters Aries, the first sign, which is what makes it the first month.

That entry does more than settle the name. The Sun is exalted, meaning at its strongest, in the early degrees of Aries, so the closing stretch of Chaitra carries the strongest Sun of the whole year. The day of the entry is a festival in half the country on its own account, kept as Baisakhi in Punjab, Vishu in Kerala, Puthandu in Tamil Nadu and Pohela Boishakh in Bengal.

Gudi Padwa, Ugadi and the New Year

In the reckoning used across the west and the south, Chaitra opens on the first day of its bright fortnight, and that day is the lunar new year. In Maharashtra it is Gudi Padwa, when a gudi is raised at the doorway, a bright cloth and a garlanded pot hoisted on a pole. In Karnataka, Andhra and Telangana it is Ugadi, marked by eating bevu bella, neem and jaggery together, so the year's bitter and its sweet arrive in the same mouthful. Sindhi families keep the same turning as Cheti Chand.

The day is one of the three and a half abujha muhurats of the year, days held to be auspicious in themselves, so no special hour needs to be found inside them. It is the classic date to open a business, buy a house or a vehicle, or lay a foundation.

Nine Nights, and Then Rama

Chaitra Navratri begins on the same morning. It is the spring counterpart of the Navratri kept in autumn, given to the same nine forms of Durga over the same nine nights, and it is the quieter of the two. There are no pandals and no dandiya. What people do instead is fast, sow barley in a pot of earth and watch it come up, and read the Durga Saptashati through the nine days.

The ninth night is Ram Navami, the birth of Rama at midday. Chaitra therefore holds the year's most complete arc of the Goddess and then hands it to the man the tradition holds up as the model of right conduct, which is the order the month is built in.

The Star Behind the Name

Chaitra is named for Chitra, one of the twenty seven nakshatras, the lunar mansions the Moon passes through in a month. Its lord is Mars, its deity is Tvashtar, the celestial craftsman who shapes forms, and its symbol is a single bright jewel. The name means the bright one, and this is the star you can pick out for yourself: Chitra is Spica, the brightest thing in that part of the sky.

A month named for the maker's star, standing at the head of the year, is not an accident of the calendar. Chitra's territory is design, craft and things brought into being, and Chaitra is the month the tradition puts every kind of beginning into.

Whose Month This Really Is

Chaitra does specific work on specific charts.

If your Sun is weak or afflicted, showing as low vitality, strain with your father, or work that goes unrecognised, the closing weeks of Chaitra carry the strongest Sun of your year. Water offered to the rising Sun, begun on the day the Sun enters Aries and kept every morning after, is the standard remedy at the one point in the calendar when the planet it addresses is at full strength.

If you are running a Mars period, or you were born under Chitra, Mrigashirsha or Dhanishta, the three mansions Mars governs, the month carries your own signature and its opening is worth using rather than watching.

If you have a venture, a house or a vehicle waiting on a good date, Gudi Padwa is the one day in Chaitra that needs no further checking. Weddings are the exception, and the reason for that sits in the dates below.

And if Sharad Navratri in October has always felt too public to you, Chaitra Navratri is the same nine nights kept privately, and it is the one most practitioners prefer.

To place yourself in this you need three facts about your own birth: your moon sign, your birth star, and the planet running your current dasha, the chapter the Vedic period system divides a life into. The free birth chart gives you the first two from your date, time and place of birth, and the free dasha calculator gives you the third.

The 2026 Window

In Purnimanta reckoning, used across north India, Chaitra 2026 runs from 4 March to 2 April. The month opens on Holi itself, the morning after the Holika bonfire of 3 March.

In Amanta reckoning, used across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and the south, Chaitra 2026 opens at the new moon of 19 March, which is Gudi Padwa and Ugadi, and closes at the new moon of 17 April.

Gudi Padwa, Ugadi and Cheti Chand fall on 19 March 2026, and Chaitra Navratri opens the same day. Ram Navami falls on 26 March 2026 and closes the nine nights. The Moon is exactly full at 07:41 on the morning of 2 April 2026, so the full moon night is the night of 1 April, and 1 April is the day Hanuman Jayanti is kept.

The Sun enters sidereal Aries on 14 April 2026, which is Baisakhi, Vishu, Puthandu and Pohela Boishakh. That entry falls inside the Amanta month and after the Purnimanta one has already closed, which is a clean illustration of why two families can call the same day by two month names and both be right.

One practical note for anyone hunting a date. The Sun sits in Pisces from 15 March to 14 April 2026, the stretch called Kharmas, and weddings are held off through all of it. Gudi Padwa is still used for a house, a shop, a vehicle or a new venture, because Kharmas bars the wedding rite rather than the day itself. The wedding season reopens when the Sun moves into Aries on 14 April.