Hindus celebrate the end of the autumn harvests and their calendar day (which is 78 years ahead of ours) whose night is the longest.
The party took hold of millions of Hindus. The Feast of Lights. Diwali or Deepvali, they call it. In Panjika, one of several lunisolar religious calendars, one of the cycles of the Moon is commemorated, more commonly considered as the New Year. Something that comes from the far past of Vedic times, the times of the holy scriptures for Hindus. If the astronomical explanation of the conjugation of calendar days, divided into such lunar cycles, is confusing and complicated to explain in an article of this nature, let us simplify things. Diwali comes from the Sanskrit word dipavali, meaning “row or series of lights”. The word is constructed from two syllables, dipa (light, lamp, lantern) and awali (row, continuity). The festivities take place at the end of the autumn harvest each year, and coincide with amosy, the New Moon, the longest night on the calendar. If the festivities last five days, the third day is the most important of all. Today, as thousands of lamps and lanterns are lit throughout Hindu countries and their communities, symbolizing sunlight and the gift of heavenly illumination, families come together in intense communion and wear new colorful clothes to celebrate the occasion. Yesterday was the day that gained the name of Bhutachaturdasi Yamaterpanam; today it is Lacshmipuja dipanwita; tomorrow it will be Dyuta pratipat Belipuja, ending the festivities on Saturday with the Bhratri dwitiya. Each day follows a series of special ceremonies. Lacshmipuja dipanwita is dedicated to the goddess Lakshmi, woman of Vishnu and the personification of prosperity, blessing the crops, figure seated on a large lotus flower leaf and holding lotus flowers in her four hands.
