Holi

Holi is two days, and they are not the same festival wearing one name.

The first is a fire on the night of the Phalguna full moon, lit for a boy who walked through fire chanting a name and came out unharmed. The second is the morning after, when the whole country throws colour at each other, and which Braj keeps as the Holi of Radha and Krishna.

When Holi falls

Holika Dahan is Phalguna purnima and Rangwali Holi the morning after. The bonfire muhurat in 2027 runs from 6:33 to 8:55 PM. The general and Vaishnava reckonings agree on both days in both years. The muhurat is a local clock time and it shifts with the Bhadra window, so take it from a panchang pinned to your own city in the weeks before rather than from a national figure.

Why is a fire lit the night before?

For Prahlada, and for what kept him.

He was a boy who would not stop chanting the name of Vishnu, and his father, the king Hiranyakashipu, tried everything to make him stop. The Bhagavata Purana runs through the attempts in a single unbroken list: elephants, serpents, spells, a fall from a hilltop, illusion. Fire is one item in it, no larger than the rest:

"...by administering poison, by starving him, by exposing him to severe cold, winds, fire and water..."

Bhagavata Purana 7.5.43 to 45

None of it worked. That is the whole point of the passage: nothing at all could touch a boy who was chanting the holy name.

The day and the name come from elsewhere. The Narada Purana, in the Purva-bhaga, chapter 124, gives Holika her name, ties her to Prahlada, and sets the observance on Phalguna Purnima, the full moon of Phalguna. It also offers more than one way of reading the fire: as Holika, as the burning of the old year at its end, and as the burning of Kama, desire. Braj takes all three and does not choose.

The Vishnu Purana, at 1.18, tells it a third way. A woman of fire is sent against Prahlada and is not named, and the fire turns back on the ones who sent her while the boy stands untouched, chanting.

So when the fire is lit on the full moon night, what is being remembered is not a burning. It is a boy who was not burned, and the name that held him.

On the night itself: wood and dried cow dung cakes are stacked in the days before, often around a pole. At the muhurat the fire is lit, families circle it three or seven times with water, kumkum and roli, and offer new grain, chickpeas and coconut into it. The roasted grain is taken home. Ash from the fire is worn on the forehead the next morning.

Why is Holi celebrated with colours?

Because of Krishna's face, and a thing Yashoda said to him.

Braj tells it simply. The boy was dark. Radha was fair. He came to his mother troubled about it, and she told him to stop worrying and go colour Radha's face any shade he pleased. He went and did exactly that, and Braj has not stopped since.

The earliest text that places the two of them at a Holi is the Garga Samhita, in its fourth khanda, chapter twelve, where Krishna comes into the groves to play colour with Radha and the sakhis:

"He has come to Your forest."

Garga Samhita 4.12.7

That single line carries a lot. He is from the other side of Braj. He has arrived where he was not asked. And out of it grew the whole exchange between the two villages that becomes Lathmar Holi.

What the colour means, in the end, is that on this one day the distance goes. Gulal covers the face; nobody can tell who is rich and who is poor, who is young and who is old, who is from which house. That levelling is not a modern gloss on the festival. It is exactly what a grove full of colour did to Krishna and the gopis, and it is why the day feels the way it does.

What our own lineage sings on Holi

There is a whole book of Holi in this lineage. Prem Ras Madira, the collection of devotional padas by Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj, gives its eighteenth chapter, Hori Madhuri, entirely to this festival, and those padas are sung every spring wherever his followers keep it.

The best known of them begins by calling a friend out to play:

lāl saṅg, kheliy hil mil phāg. chalu rī sakhī!

"O Sakhi! Play Holi with Shyamasundara with the sentiment of love."

Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj, Prem Ras Madira, Hori Madhuri

And then it turns every part of the play into something interior:

keśar ghora bhāv kī gorī! pichkārī anurāg.

"Mix the saffron colour of your devotional sentiments, and using the pichkari of attachment for Him, play Holi with Him."

Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj, Prem Ras Madira, Hori Madhuri

The saffron is bhava. The pichkari is anurag. Nothing in the picture is dropped and nothing is left merely literal, which is the whole method of these padas.

In his Holi discourse Maharaj Ji puts the same thing as a statement about where God is. Prahlada's father demanded to know whether God was in a pillar, and the answer that came out of it is the one the festival exists to carry:

"In reality, Holi is meant to remind us that God is present everywhere."

Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj

Swami Mukundananda puts the practical end of it in one line: the path of divine love is a nitya-utsav, an eternal celebration. Sing Krishna's glories, dance, think of him, and rejoice in his service. Holi is one day; that is meant to be every day.

Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat keeps the festival with a Holi Sadhana Shivir at Shri Kripalu Dham, Mangarh, running for ten days or more, with the colour played on the grounds of Bhakti Mandir.

How Braj keeps Holi

Not for two days. For about forty.

Braj starts at Vasant Panchami, when the Holi pole goes up and the samaj gayan begins, and does not stop until the full moon. Each town takes its own day.

If you are going, Vrindavan and Barsana have the practical detail for each.

Playing it well

Holi is one of the few days in the year when nobody in a street is a stranger, and it stays that way if a few things are kept.

Use natural colour. Gulal from flowers, turmeric, sandalwood and beetroot. Chemical colour is hard on skin and worse on eyes, and it does not smell like Holi.

Oil first. Coconut or mustard oil in the hair and on the skin, and the colour comes off in one wash instead of four.

Colour the willing. Ask, or read the face. Keep it away from eyes. Keep water out of it around elders, small children, and anyone dressed for the temple.

Take it easy on the thandai. The bhang version is traditional and it is also strong, and it is not what a first Holi in Braj should be spent on.

Where this sits in the Radha Krishna year

Holi closes the bright half of the Braj year. It opens at Vasant Panchami in Magha and builds through Lathmar Holi at Barsana and Nandgaon to the full moon of Phalguna.

The other end of the year belongs to the monsoon and the autumn: Jhulan Yatra in Shravana, Janmashtami and Radhashtami in Bhadrapada, Sharad Purnima in Ashwin. For the whole cycle, see the festivals of Radha Krishna.