Shraddha dates — when the rites fall.
The annual shraddha is kept on the tithi of passing, not the calendar date — so it moves each year, and it depends on where you are. Enter the date and we will give you this year’s tithi, the Pitru Paksha day, and Mahalaya Amavasya, calculated for your city.
If you have come here after a bereavement, our condolences. The rites are a duty and a kindness, and there is no wrong time to begin keeping them — a year missed is made up, not lost.
Find the shraddha tithi
Why it moves every year
Three things decide the day, and none of them is the Gregorian date. This is the commonest cause of families keeping the rite on the wrong day.
The rite is kept on the lunar day of passing. If someone died on Krishna Saptami, the annual shraddha falls on Krishna Saptami — which lands on a different Gregorian date each year.
Whether the tithi fell in the waxing or waning fortnight. The same tithi number occurs twice a lunar month, so the paksha settles which one is meant.
Shraddha tithi is judged by which tithi is running in the aparahna — the fourth part of the day, roughly early afternoon. This differs from Ekadashi, judged at sunrise, and it is why almanacs sometimes disagree.
Aparahna is calculated from local sunrise and sunset. A shraddha can fall a day apart between Chennai and Toronto, which matters for families keeping it in two countries.
Besides the annual date, the rites are kept once a year during Pitru Paksha — a fortnight given entirely to the ancestors. Within it, each person’s rite falls on the tithi matching their day of passing, so your result gives that date too.
Mahalaya Amavasya closes the fortnight and is the most significant day of the year for ancestral rites. It is kept for all ancestors together — and by those who do not know a date of passing, which is the traditional answer to that difficulty.
Marriages, housewarmings and new undertakings are set aside during the fortnight. This is not inauspiciousness in the ordinary sense; the time simply belongs to something else. See this year’s dates →
Practice, and where it differs
- Traditionally the eldest son, and in his absence another son, a grandson, or the nearest male relative in the paternal line.
- Where there is no son, practice varies genuinely and both positions are held sincerely. Many families now have a daughter perform the rites, and a number of traditional authorities support this. Others appoint a relative or have the rites performed by priests on the family’s behalf. If your family has a practice, follow it.
- Where the date of passing is unknown — common for those separated by partition, migration or war — Mahalaya Amavasya is the traditional day, and it is a complete answer, not a lesser one.
- Where the rites cannot be performed in person, they may be performed on your behalf by priests, with the departed named in the sankalpa and your gotra declared. This is long-established practice, not a modern accommodation.
- Regional difference is real. North Indian and southern reckonings of the month differ, and Bengali practice differs again. Where your family keeps a date, that is the one to keep.
What families ask us
Is something unresolved in the line?
Some families arrive at this page wondering whether rites were missed in an earlier generation, or whether a chart shows Pitra dosha — the affliction read as an obligation carried down the paternal line, indicated by the Sun, the ninth house or its lord.
That is a genuine question, and it is answered by reading a chart rather than by a calculator. But two things are worth saying before anyone asks it.
A death does not indicate a dosha. Bereavement is not evidence of anything in a chart, and we will not tell you it is. Nor is a previous generation’s neglect something you are being punished for. Where the affliction is present it is frequently cancelled outright — and frequently it is simply not there.
If you would like to know either way, Brahmashree Shivaaya reads the chart himself and will tell you plainly. You can also check it yourself, free — our tool reports the cancellations as well as the affliction, which is the part that usually decides it.
Thila Homa — the fire rite for the departed
Sesame and ghee offered into consecrated agni for the one who has passed, with their name spoken in the sankalpa and the family’s gotra declared by whoever sponsors it.
Kept for families living abroad, and where illness, distance or circumstance means no one can perform it in person. Our priests keep it on the tithi calculated for you, at our Yagna Ashram in Coimbatore.
- The departed named in the sankalpa, with your gotra
- Kept on the shraddha tithi, or during Pitru Paksha, as you prefer
- Tila tarpanam performed alongside, as tradition prescribes