Navratri 2026 Day 3, 13 October: Maa Chandraghanta Puja Vidhi, Bhog, Mantra and Colour

2026-08-25

Navratri 2026 Day 3 is Tuesday, 13 October — Ashwina Shukla Tritiya, running from 10:14 PM on the 12th to 11:28 PM on the 13th. Maa Chandraghanta's puja vidhi, milk bhog, mantra, the honest answer on the colour, and Delhi timings with Rahu kaal at 3:00 PM.

The third day of Shardiya Navratri belongs to Maa Chandraghanta, and in 2026 it falls on Tuesday, 13 October. She is the form the Devi takes after her marriage to Shiva — ten-armed, riding a lion, a half-moon shaped like a bell on her forehead. The day carries one quality above the rest: nirbhayata, fearlessness. Below are the timings, the vidhi, and an honest account of what is fixed here and what is not.

Navratri 2026 Day 3: date and tithi

Day 3 is Ashwina Shukla Tritiya. The tithi begins late on the night of 12 October and ends late on 13 October, so Tritiya is already running at sunrise on the 13th and holds through every hour you might sit for puja. In some years the third day is squeezed by a tithi ending mid-morning. In 2026 it is not.

These are Delhi times. Sunrise, sunset and Rahu kaal shift with longitude — earlier in the east, later in the west — so check your own city on the daily panchang before fixing an hour. Tithi start and end times are the same across India; only the sun-linked timings move.

How Day 3 sits between its neighbours:

Why she is called Chandraghanta

Chandra is the moon; ghanta is a bell. On her forehead sits the ardha-chandra, the half moon, curved like the bell in a temple doorway. That single ornament is the whole identification, and the one thing every source agrees on.

The Devi Kavacham of the Durga Saptashati, where the nine names are formally listed, counts her off third without describing her at all:

प्रथमं शैलपुत्री च द्वितीयं ब्रह्मचारिणी। तृतीयं चन्द्रघण्टेति कूष्माण्डेति चतुर्थकम्॥

Everything else — the lion, the ten arms, the golden body — comes from dhyana verses and later retelling, not from that enumeration.

Ten hands, and what they hold

Chandraghanta is dashabhuja, ten-armed, and mounted on a lion. The dhyana verse recited for her is compact:

पिण्डजप्रवरारूढा चण्डकोपास्त्रकैर्युता। प्रसादं तनुते मह्यं चन्द्रघण्टेति विश्रुता॥

— mounted on her chosen carrier, armed with the weapons of terrible wrath, may she who is renowned as Chandraghanta grant her grace.

What the ten hands hold varies by source. Trishul, gada, dhanush, bana, khadga and kamandalu appear in most lists, and two hands are almost always in abhaya and varada mudra — protection and giving. But the lists do not fully agree, and no text we can point to fixes the order. A page offering a confident inventory of all ten has chosen one version without saying so.

The sound that dispels fear

The bell is not ornament. In the tradition the ghanta-nada — the sound of her bell — is what the asuras cannot withstand; it scatters danger before a weapon is raised. That is why she is invoked for protection rather than gain, and why her worship is aimed at the fear itself rather than at the thing feared.

There is an everyday echo: the bell rung at the start of any aarti clears the space of what should not be in it. Whether the temple bell takes its meaning from Chandraghanta or the reverse, no text settles.

The colour for Day 3

This is where most Navratri coverage quietly invents, because two different things get mixed together.

The first is textual: the dhyana tradition describes Chandraghanta as golden-bodied. That is the colour of her form, not a dress code, and it is old and consistent.

The second is the nine-colour chart that circulates every autumn. It began as a Gujarati newspaper feature in Mumbai and is keyed to the weekday on which Pratipada falls — and because that weekday shifts yearly, the chart shifts with it. There is no permanent "Day 3 colour". Generic lists usually put grey against Chandraghanta; year-specific charts often do not. Neither is wrong, because neither is shastra. Pick one list and follow it all nine days.

Bhog: milk and kheer

The offering associated with Chandraghanta is milk — plain doodh, kheer, or a milk sweet such as peda. This is settled custom, followed almost everywhere. It is not prescribed in the Saptashati or the Puranas, and no primary text gives a reason for it. The usual explanations — that milk cools a fierce form, or soothes the moon on her brow — are later rationalisation, and we would rather say so than dress them up as scripture. The honest position: this is what has been offered for a very long time, so offer it.

In many households the Day 3 milk is given away afterwards rather than taken as prasad; elsewhere it is taken normally. Both are current, and neither is a rule.

Mantra

Three levels; use whichever the morning allows.

• Nama mantra: ॐ देवी चन्द्रघण्टायै नमः, recited 108 times on a mala.
• Dhyana shloka: the पिण्डजप्रवरारूढा verse above, three times before beginning.
• Navarna mantra: ऐं ह्रीं क्लीं चामुण्डायै विच्चे — used across all nine days rather than for Day 3 specifically.

Care with pronunciation matters more than the count. If the Sanskrit is unfamiliar, the nama mantra alone is enough.

Puja vidhi for Day 3

1. Sit before the kalash established on Pratipada. Day 3 needs no fresh sthapana.
2. Light the akhand jyot if you keep one, otherwise the day's diya.
3. Offer water, then roli and akshat, to the kalash and the Devi's image.
4. Offer flowers. No classical text fixes a flower for her; lotus and marigold are both common.
5. Offer the milk or kheer bhog.
6. Recite the dhyana verse, then the nama mantra 108 times.
7. Ring the bell through the aarti. On this day of all days it is the point of the ritual, not the punctuation.
8. Close with kshama prarthana, asking pardon for whatever was done wrongly or left out.

If you are keeping the nine-day fast, Day 3 follows the same rules as Days 1 and 2; the full sequence is in our Navratri 2026 nine-day calendar.

Timing: Rahu kaal falls late this year

13 October is a Tuesday, and Tuesday's Rahu kaal in Delhi runs 3:00 PM to 4:26 PM. That is unusually convenient: the whole morning and midday are clear, so a sunrise or pre-noon puja has no conflict at all. If your household worships in the evening, begin after 4:30 PM rather than before.

Rahu kaal is calculated from local sunrise, so the Delhi window above will not be yours; the Rahu kaal page gives it for your own city. And to be plain: Rahu kaal is a convention for choosing between good times, not a prohibition on worship. Nothing in the tradition says the Devi stops listening for eighty-six minutes.

Nirbhayata: what Day 3 is actually for

Each of the nine forms carries a quality, and Chandraghanta's is fearlessness. In tantric sadhana she is placed at the Manipura chakra at the solar plexus — the seat of will, and of the fear that undoes will. The order of the nine days is not arbitrary: Shailputri is rootedness, Brahmacharini is discipline held over time, and only then, third, the removal of fear. Courage comes after ground to stand on and the patience to hold it.

That is the usable part of Day 3, and it asks nothing about whether you wore the right colour. Sit, ring the bell, and name what you are actually afraid of. The rest of the festival, through Durga Ashtami and Maha Navami, builds on it.