Pitru Paksha: The Fortnight That Belongs to the Ancestors

Pitru Paksha is the one stretch of the Hindu year given entirely to the dead of your own family. For a fortnight, food and water are offered by name to three generations of ancestors, and the household's debt to them is settled for another year. In 2026 it opens on the full moon of 26 September and closes on Mahalaya Amavasya, the new moon of 10 October.

Both dates come from our own panchang rather than a calendar lookup. The fortnight is fixed by the tithi, the lunar day measured by how far the Moon has pulled ahead of the Sun. Purnima, the full-moon tithi, holds through 26 September, and Amavasya, the new-moon tithi, holds through 10 October. The daily rites begin the morning after the full moon, on 27 September.

What Is Actually Being Done

Shraddha is the rite at the centre of the fortnight, and the word means an act done with shraddha, faith. It is a meal. Cooked food is offered to the ancestors, a portion is set aside for the crow, the cow and the dog, guests are fed, and only then does the family eat. Nothing about it is mournful. The frame is hospitality, the ancestors received as guests who have travelled a long way, and the merit of the day lies in feeding them well.

Tarpan is the smaller daily half of it. Water mixed with black sesame is poured from cupped hands while facing south, each ancestor named as it is offered. Sesame carries the offering and the south is the direction the ancestors are held to occupy. Where a full shraddha with cooked food and guests is beyond a household, tarpan alone is accepted, and in most homes now it is what actually happens.

Pinda dan is the third element, small balls of cooked rice mixed with barley flour, sesame, honey and ghee, offered by name to the father, the grandfather and the great-grandfather, and in many traditions to the mother's line as well. Gaya, Varanasi and Haridwar draw large numbers through the fortnight for exactly this, because a pinda dan performed at those places is held to settle the obligation permanently.

Who Performs It

The first claim belongs to the eldest son, then to younger sons, then to grandsons and the brother's line. Where there is no son, a daughter or a daughter's son performs it, and that is not a modern concession: the Garuda Purana names the daughter's son among the eligible, and many families now have daughters perform it whether or not a son exists. A person whose father is living does not perform shraddha for the paternal line, because the duty has not yet fallen to them.

Which Tithi You Keep, and For Whom

The rule is simple and most people have never been told it. You keep an ancestor's shraddha on the tithi on which that person died, whichever day of the fortnight it happens to land on. If your father died on a Panchami, the fifth lunar day, you keep his shraddha on the Panchami of Pitru Paksha, whatever the calendar date of the death was.

Four days in the fortnight are reserved rather than assigned:

• Purnima, the opening full moon, for those who died on a full moon.
• Navami, the ninth lunar day, kept as Matru Navami for the mother and for the married women of the line.
• Chaturdashi, the fourteenth, for those who died by accident, weapon or violence, and not for a natural death.
• Amavasya, the closing new moon, called Sarva Pitru Amavasya, which takes every ancestor at once. If you do not know the death tithi, or you can keep only one day of the fortnight, that is the day. In 2026 it is 10 October.

One practical note. The tithi for shraddha is taken by aparahna, the fourth of the five parts the daylight is divided into, which lands in the early to middle afternoon. A tithi that begins after sunrise or ends before mid-afternoon therefore attaches to a different day than a sunrise reading would suggest. Match the tithi in your local panchang rather than counting days forward from the start of the fortnight.

The Part of Your Chart This Sits On

The ancestral line is not an abstraction in a birth chart. It has three specific addresses, and what the fortnight is worth to you personally depends on what those three are carrying.

The 9th house holds the father, the forefathers and the inherited moral line, everything that reached you before you had any say in it. The Sun carries the father himself, the paternal descent, and your own standing in the world. Ketu, the descending lunar node, is the classic marker of the unfinished past, of what the line handed down without resolving.

Pitru Dosha is the name given to a specific pattern across those three, most often the Sun or the ruler of the 9th house sitting with Rahu, Ketu or Saturn, or the 9th house under heavy affliction. It is read as an inherited obligation rather than a punishment, and Pitru Paksha is the fortnight in which it is traditionally addressed. It is also claimed far more often than it is actually present, which is why the sensible first step is to look rather than to accept the diagnosis. Our page on Pitru Dosha sets out how the pattern is read.

If you have never seen your own 9th house, your Sun's condition or where Ketu sits, the free kundli computes all three from your birth date, time and place in a few seconds. It is worth knowing before you decide how much of this fortnight applies to you.

What the Fortnight Asks of You

Keep it simple and keep it as hospitality. Cook something the person you are remembering actually liked. Feed someone. Offer water and sesame facing south with the name said aloud. If the whole fortnight is beyond you, keep Sarva Pitru Amavasya on 10 October 2026 and let it stand for all of them.

Custom holds back new beginnings through the fortnight, so weddings, house-warmings, vehicle purchases and business launches are usually pushed past it. The reason is not that the days are unlucky. The fortnight already has a purpose, and starting something of your own inside it is treated as changing the subject while a guest is speaking.