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Re: Sri rAma navami

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Mani Varadarajan • March 4, 1999 


Sri Anand wrote:
>  Note: adiyEn doesn't know whether this calculation
>  will be different for different parts of the world.
> But, atleast in TamiLnAdU / South India, SrirAma navamI
> can be celebrated on march 25th.

Essentially, for places west of India, irrespective of
sampradAyam, it is my calculation that Sri Rama Navami
should be celebrated on March 25th.  This is because the
start and end of nakshatra and tithi times are essentially
universal -- they are at the same instant across the globe 
(except for parallax errors, which we shall ignore). 
So, if a particular nakshatram is in ascendancy at 9 AM
in India, it is ascendant at the same time in San Francisco,
i.e., at 7:30 PM previous date. Just compensate for the
time difference.

For the particular case of Sri Rama Navami, 
if the rule is that one should have less than 3 naazhigais
of ashtami, for places in the U.S., for example, the 25th
will be completely free of ashtami, so it is an appropriate
date. In the U.S., Sri Rama Navami should not be celebrated
on the 26th even for munitrayam sampradayam followers, because
it is Dasami, Pushya nakshatram.  Sri Rama Navami must be
celebrated on Navami, with Punarvasu nakshatram.

For places east of India, it is probably better to observe
Sri Rama Navami on the 26th, by the same reckoning.

If this is confusing, I agree. At some point we have to
throw up our hands, celebrate our festivals on a given
day, and leave the "rightness" or "wrongness" up to 
PerumaaL.

Mani