Varaha Jayanti 2026: 13 September, the Katha and the Meaning of Vishnu's Third Avatar

2026-09-02

Bhadrapada Shukla Tritiya runs from 07:10 on 13 September 2026 to 07:08 the next morning, so the day turns on which rule you apply. Varaha Jayanti follows the madhyahna reckoning, which places it on Sunday, 13 September. The katha, the boar form, and how the day is kept.

Varaha Jayanti marks the third of Vishnu's ten avatars — the boar who went down into the water and brought the earth back up on his tusks. It passes unnoticed in much of North India, standing beside Hartalika Teej and Ganesh Chaturthi. In the Varaha kshetras of the south it is a full temple day.

The date: Sunday, 13 September 2026

Varaha Jayanti is Bhadrapada Shukla Tritiya. On our panchang that tithi begins on Sunday, 13 September 2026 at 07:10 IST and ends on Monday, 14 September at 07:08 IST. A tithi's start and end are absolute moments, the same everywhere in India; what changes by city is sunrise, and so which day the tithi belongs to.

Why 13 September, when some calendars say 14

Tritiya begins about an hour after sunrise on Sunday and ends about an hour after sunrise on Monday, so neither day holds it cleanly. Two rules are in play, and here they pull apart.

• Udaya-tithi — the tithi running at sunrise names the day. At Delhi's sunrise on 13 September (06:06) Dwitiya was still running, until 07:10; at sunrise on 14 September Tritiya was running, until 07:08. By this rule Tritiya is Monday, which is why our engine puts Hartalika Teej there — the right rule for a vrat kept in the morning.
• Madhyahna-vyapini — for observances tied to a midday appearance, the day is the one whose madhyahna the tithi covers. Tritiya covers all of Sunday's madhyahna (11:02–13:31 in Delhi) and none of Monday's, being over by 07:08. By this rule Tritiya is Sunday.

Varaha Jayanti belongs to the second class, which is why 13 September is the reading here. A household going strictly by the sunrise tithi will keep it on 14 September instead; both are defensible, and they answer different questions.

Where does that second rule come from? Not from the story — the Puranas put no clock time on the appearance. The midday window is assigned by the dharmanibandha digests, as it is for Ganesh Chaturthi: a rule of the calendrical tradition, not a detail of the narrative. Better said plainly than dressed up in a reason it does not have. We took up the same question for Hartalika Teej separately.

Madhyahna window, city by city

Madhyahna is the middle fifth of the day, sunrise to sunset. Times local, 13 September 2026.

Tritiya runs through every one of those windows, so the reading holds countrywide. Sunrise differs by city, and this is a borderline case; check your own panchang before fixing a time.

The katha: Bhudevi, Hiranyaksha and the water

The fullest telling is in the third skandha of the Bhagavata Purana. Svayambhuva Manu asks Brahma for ground to stand on and there is none — the earth has sunk under the cosmic waters. Brahma sits in meditation, and from his nostril comes a boar no bigger than a thumb. It grows to the size of an elephant, then of a mountain. It roars once, and the roar is heard as the Sama chants. Then it dives.

Down in the water is Hiranyaksha, "golden-eyed", son of Diti and twin of Hiranyakashipu. He has dragged the earth down with him and has been hunting a fight he cannot find, until a boar goes past with the earth on its tusks. The duel is long and mostly maces. Brahma warns Varaha not to let it run into the night, when such beings grow stronger; Varaha ends it with a blow at the root of the ear and sets the earth back upon the waters.

The demon is a late arrival. The oldest layer has no Hiranyaksha at all: the Taittiriya Samhita and the Shatapatha Brahmana already know a boar who raises the earth from the waters, and there the boar is Prajapati, not Vishnu. The rescue is the old part; the villain came afterwards.

Why a boar

No text argues the point, so the honest answer is that the shastra gives no reason. What can be said is what fits. The work was to go down into water and mud and lift something out, and the boar is the animal that does exactly that — it roots, it digs, it surfaces with what it went in for. Of the ten avatars it is the least dignified form, which is close to the sense of avatarana: the rescue was worth the mud.

Bhu-Varaha and Yajna-Varaha

Bhu-Varaha is the narrative form, Varaha with Bhudevi. In sculpture he is usually nri-varaha: a boar's head on a human body, a foot braced on the coiled hood of the serpent below, the earth-goddess small on his raised forearm. The Gupta relief in Cave 5 at Udayagiri is the textbook example; the Varaha mandapa at Mahabalipuram is another.

Yajna-Varaha is the theological form. Praising Varaha, the rishis of the Bhagavata and the Vishnu Purana read his body as a sacrifice: the Vedas his feet, the sacrificial post his tusk, fire his tongue, kusha grass the bristles of his hide, the Sama chant his voice. The lists differ between the two — a reminder that this is a hymn, not a schematic. In sculpture Yajna-Varaha is the fully zoomorphic boar: the monolith at Khajuraho, carved over with hundreds of small figures of gods, and the great Gupta boar at Eran. (Varahi, incidentally, is not a form of Varaha at all, but a distinct goddess, one of the Matrikas.)

Where Varaha is worshipped

• Sri Varahaswami temple, Tirumala — on the Swami Pushkarini. Tradition holds it older than the Venkateswara temple, and the first darshan and naivedya go here before the main shrine.
• Bhu Varaha Swamy temple, Srimushnam, Tamil Nadu — the principal Varaha kshetra of the south, largely Nayaka-period as it stands.
• Simhachalam, near Visakhapatnam — Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha, a combined form, kept under sandalwood paste all year except on Chandanotsavam.

How the day is kept

No elaborate vidhi attaches to this day, and it is not a common household vrat in the north. Where it is kept:

• Snan and sankalp in the morning; a light phalahar fast for those who keep one. Nirjala is not called for.
• Puja in the madhyahna window rather than at dawn. This is the one timing that matters.
• Where there is no Varaha murti, Vishnu is worshipped in his place; tulsi, panchamrit, yellow flowers, jaggery.
• Recitation of the Varaha stuti from the third skandha, or the Bhu Suktam, addressed to the earth herself; anna dana. In the Varaha temples the day carries special abhishekam and processions.

For the rest of the month, see our Bhadrapada 2026 list; for how tithi timings are computed, the tithi page; for daily figures for your city, the panchang.

What the story is about

Read plainly, the katha is about an earth that is a person rather than a resource. Bhudevi is rescued, not repaired. The one who sinks her is named for the gold in his eyes. And the god who goes after her sends nobody, and does not stay clean. What the story says is simpler than the ecological readings drawn from it: the earth was lost, and someone went down for her.