What it is
Shraddha is the rite a family keeps for a parent or an elder who has passed away: offerings of food, water and sesame, prayers, and often a meal for a pandit or for those in need. Many families keep it each year on the tithi of the passing, the lunar day on which the death fell, in the same lunar month and the same half of the month, the bright fortnight or the dark one.
Because the Hindu calendar follows the Moon, its year is about eleven days shorter than the English year, with an extra month added every few years to keep the seasons in place. So the tithi of the passing falls on a different English date each year. A family that knows the tithi needs that year's panchang to find the day. During Pitru Paksha, the fortnight of the ancestors, many families also offer shraddha on the same tithi, and Sarva Pitru Amavasya, the last day of that fortnight, is kept for every ancestor whose tithi is not known.
What you enter
The form is short. Its fields, as the web app shows them:
- Date of death, the one field you must fill.
- How many years ahead, if you want more or fewer years than the form suggests.
- Month reckoning: Amanta, Purnimanta or Both. Amanta months end on the new moon, as in Maharashtra, Gujarat and the south; Purnimanta months end on the full moon, as in much of the north. Choose the one your family follows, or Both to see each.
The dates are worked out for the city in your settings, so set it to the city where you keep the rite.
What you get
The tool shows the tithi of the passing, its lunar month and its fortnight, and then the English date of its anniversary for each year ahead that you asked for. Each date is the day on which that tithi holds for your city, read the way a panchang reads it.
This tool has no paid reading. It is free, and the result is all there is to it. The date of death stays in the form: it is never put into a link or the address bar, so it is not kept in your browser's history.
How it is worked out
The tool reads the tithi of the passing on the date you gave, and its lunar month by the reckoning you chose. It then finds, in each year ahead, the day on which the same tithi of the same month holds at your city's sunrise. When a tithi begins after one sunrise and ends before the next, or when a month repeats as an adhika month, it follows the rules a panchang follows.
Every answer comes from our own panchang engine, worked out for the city you choose and read on the sidereal zodiac with the Lahiri ayanamsa, the one the Calendar Reform Committee of India adopted. The same engine prints the dates and times on our calendar and panchang pages, so the tool and the calendar never disagree with each other. How we compute explains the method, and why a printed almanac from your town may differ from it by a minute or two.
Before you begin
The tool is free with a Bhagya Card account. If you are not signed in, the button above takes you to sign in first, with your mobile number or your email, and then straight to the tool.
Check the city in your settings first. Families who keep the rite in another city from the one they live in should set that city while they look up the dates, because the day a tithi holds can differ between places.
Questions
Why does the English date change every year?
The lunar year is about eleven days shorter than the English one, so a tithi moves against the English calendar from year to year, and moves back when an extra month is added.
Which month reckoning should I choose?
The one your family follows. In Maharashtra, Gujarat and the south most families follow Amanta; in much of the north, Purnimanta. If you are not sure, choose Both and ask an elder which matches the dates you have kept.
Is there a paid reading for shraddha dates?
No. The shraddha tool has no paid reading at all; its result is free with an account.