Chaturmas: four months when the calendar closes and something else opens
Where the Sun stands against the four-month window right now — the Sun stands in sidereal Cancer on 31 July 2026, which is inside the Cancer-to-Libra span this site uses to approximate Chaturmas.
Bounded by two Ekadashis
Chaturmas is the four-month observance that runs from Devshayani Ekadashi, the eleventh of the bright fortnight of Ashadha, to Prabodhini or Devuthani Ekadashi, the eleventh of the bright fortnight of Kartik. In the devotional framing Vishnu sleeps for that period and wakes at its close, and the major auspicious rites wait for the waking. In the practical framing it is the monsoon: the season when travel was hard, roads were impassable and renunciants stayed in one place.
The two framings are not in competition, and the second explains a lot about the first. Chaturmas is when the wandering ascetic settles, which is why it became the great season of teaching and recitation in both the Hindu and the Jain traditions; the Jain Chaturmas is a formal monastic residence with its own observances. A calendar that pauses weddings for four months is also a calendar that fills those months with something else.
Because it is bounded by lunar dates rather than solar ones, Chaturmas moves against the civil calendar from year to year — it usually opens in the first half of July and closes in early or mid November. That distinguishes it immediately from Kharmas, which follows the Sun and therefore lands on nearly the same dates every year.
What each of the four months asks
The observance is not a single rule but a sequence of them, one per month, each traditionally setting aside a category of food. These are widely followed even in households that hold no other part of the observance, and each has a plain seasonal reading alongside the devotional one — the monsoon is the worst time of year for exactly the foods each month names.
| Lunar month | Approximate window | Traditionally set aside | Seasonal reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shravana | Jul – Aug | Leafy greens and saag | Peak monsoon; leaf vegetables spoil and carry infection |
| Bhadrapada | Aug – Sep | Curd and yoghurt | Humidity and unreliable fermentation |
| Ashwin | Sep – Oct | Milk | Cattle feed changes with the wet season |
| Kartik | Oct – Nov | Pulses, and in many households onion and garlic | Digestive fire is held to be lowest at the turn of the season |
Regional practice varies considerably in both the list and the strictness. Some traditions observe only the Kartik abstentions; others add a vow of their own choosing for the whole four months rather than following the monthly sequence.
What it closes on the muhurat calendar
Marriage and griha pravesh are the two that stop most consistently. This site bars house entry across the period and treats it as one of the reasons that rite has so few open dates — the four months cut out the whole of the monsoon, Kharmas cuts December and March, and what remains clusters into a handful of weeks in Magha, Phalguna, Vaishakha and Jyeshtha.
Practice on marriage during Chaturmas is more varied than most summaries admit. The strict reading pauses weddings for the whole four months; a widespread North Indian practice pauses them but permits several other rites; and there are lineages that treat only the Ashadha-to-Bhadrapada stretch as fully closed. Because the variation is real, a family should follow its own tradition rather than an internet consensus.
A number of things explicitly continue. Upanayana is performed during Chaturmas in several traditions; vrat, recitation, pilgrimage and charity are actively encouraged; and a great many festivals fall inside the window, including Raksha Bandhan, Janmashtami, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri and Diwali. Calling it a dead season badly misrepresents what is in fact the busiest devotional stretch of the year.
Computing it honestly
Because the boundaries are lunar tithis, the exact opening and closing depend on which sunrise the eleventh of each bright fortnight is read at — which means Chaturmas can begin a day apart in two cities, exactly as Ekadashi does. A calendar that prints a single national start date has quietly picked a reference location for you.
The site’s own scorer takes a documented shortcut here and it is worth stating plainly. Rather than tracking the two Ekadashi boundaries, it approximates the period by the Sun’s sidereal sign, excluding the transit from Cancer through Libra for the occasions that observe Chaturmas. That is close but not identical: the approximation can differ from the true tithi boundary by up to a couple of weeks at either end.
The consequence is that our house-entry lists are slightly more conservative than a tithi-exact calendar would be at the edges of the season. We would rather be a few days early in closing the window than offer a date that a family’s own priest would reject on sight — but if you are working close to the boundary, check the actual Devshayani and Prabodhini dates for your year rather than relying on the approximation.
It is also fair to note what this approximation costs in the other direction. Chaturmas and the two Kharmas windows together remove something close to five months from the year for the rites that observe all of them, and a fortnight of over-caution at each edge is not a trivial addition to that. Where a family has a genuine constraint and the date falls in the disputed fortnight, the right move is to take the exact tithi boundary to a priest rather than to accept a website’s conservative default as though it were the rule.
Frequently asked questions
Is Chaturmas the same thing as Kharmas?
No. Chaturmas is a four-month lunar observance bounded by two Ekadashis and usually running July to November; Kharmas is a solar pause of about a month while the Sun crosses Sagittarius, and a second while it crosses Pisces. They fall at different times of year, are computed from different bodies, and close overlapping but not identical sets of rites.
Which ceremonies still happen during Chaturmas?
Upanayana is performed in several traditions, and vrat, recitation, charity and pilgrimage are actively encouraged rather than merely allowed. Many of the year’s largest festivals fall inside the window. What generally pauses is the major auspicious beginning — marriage above all, and entry into a new house.
Related guides
How this guide is maintained
Everything computed on this site â the sunrise and sunset behind every window on this page, and the tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana behind the date tables â comes from a Lahiri sidereal ephemeris and a NOAA sunrise model applied to the exact coordinates of the city shown, with New Delhi as the reference city for anything not city-specific. Where this guide describes a rule that genuinely varies between texts, regions or family traditions, it says so in the paragraph rather than picking a side quietly, and where the site’s own date scorer takes a documented shortcut, the shortcut is named.
What no guide on this site can do is weigh your own chart. The tables here are a panchang shortlist — the classical tests a calendar can settle — and the personal layer that decides between the surviving dates is a separate step. Start with the occasion pages for computed dates, and see how we compute muhurat for the full method.
Written and maintained by Savan Vyas. A rule applied wrongly here is a bug, and corrections are genuinely welcome.
For a full personalised muhurat matched to your own birth chart, ask Soma on AskSoma.