Diwali peaks on the darkest night, and four faiths light it differently
Its name means a row of lamps, and its climax falls on a new moon, the blackest night of the lunar month. Hindus remember Rama's homecoming, Jains mark Mahavira's final liberation, Sikhs celebrate a guru freed from a Mughal prison, and Newar Buddhists worship Lakshmi.
Dipavali, the Sanskrit original, joins dipa, a lamp or anything that glows, with avali, a continuous line. The festival usually spans five or six days between mid-October and mid-November, beginning on Dhanteras two days before the new moon and running two days beyond it. The third day, main Diwali, is the high point, and it is an official holiday in about a dozen countries, among them Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, Singapore and Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the American states of California, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Hindu stories attached to the festival vary by region. The best known recalls Rama returning to Ayodhya with Sita and Lakshmana after defeating the demon king Ravana. Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity, and Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, are widely honoured, while Hindus in eastern India and Bangladesh generally worship Kali instead. For Sikhs the same season is Bandi Chhor Divas, commemorating the release of Guru Hargobind. In Nepal the climax goes by other names: Tihar among Hindus and Swanti among Buddhists.
The celebration itself is sensory. Homes, temples and offices glow with oil lamps called diyas, candles and lanterns; floors carry rangoli patterns; fireworks go off; and families share feasts and sweets known as mithai. Many Hindus take a ritual oil bath at dawn on each festival day. Towns stage parades, fairs and open-air music and dance, and some families post greeting cards, sometimes with boxes of confectionery, to relatives far away. Ancestors are remembered too.
Diwali probably grew from a blending of ancient Indian harvest festivals. It appears in the Padma Purana and the Skanda Purana, texts composed between the 7th and 10th centuries, and one Purana describes the lamps as fragments of the sun, the giver of light and energy to all life, which passes through a seasonal transition in the month of Kartik.
Source: Diwali
