When is Raksha Bandhan?

How the date is decided

Raksha Bandhan is Shravana Shukla Purnima — the full moon of Shravana, the fifteenth and last tithi of the waxing fortnight.

Its vyapini reference — the moment at which the tithi must be prevailing for the civil day to carry the festival — is aparahna, the late afternoon. Daylight is classically divided into five parts and aparahna is the fourth, between midday and sunset. The choice follows the rite: the tying is an afternoon act.

Three observances in this calendar use aparahna, and each has an afternoon act at its centre: Raksha Bandhan, Vijayadashami, and Bhai Dooj.

The Bhadra question

This is the part of Raksha Bandhan that generates the most searching every year, and it is worth separating cleanly from the date.

Bhadra is another name for the Vishti karana. A karana is half a tithi, and Vishti is one of the eleven karanas in the cycle. It is traditionally avoided for auspicious undertakings, and because of where it falls in the sequence it very frequently occupies part of a Purnima — which is exactly the tithi Raksha Bandhan sits on.

Two things are true and often conflated:

• Bhadra does not move the festival. The date comes from the Purnima and its aparahna reference. A Bhadra window inside that day changes nothing about which day it is.
• Bhadra does shape the hour families choose. Where Bhadra runs into the afternoon, many wait for it to end before tying.

We compute the Bhadra window and show it on the day’s panchang.

Not every Bhadra counts

The commonly repeated version — “avoid Bhadra” — drops the classical qualification, and this site had the rule wrong until it was checked against the sources and corrected.

Bhadra is held to reside in one of three worlds, and only when it resides on earth is it treated as obstructive to human undertakings. The residence is determined by the Moon’s sign, not by the fortnight, which is how it is frequently misstated. The Bhadra explainer gives the full sign-by-sign rule.

So the practical question on the day is not “is Bhadra running” but “is this Bhadra one that resides on earth”. Both facts are on the panchang.

Why the Gregorian date moves

Shravana Purnima lands between late July and late August. The lunar year runs about eleven days short of the solar one, so the festival drifts earlier until an intercalary month resets it. Major festivals are suppressed inside an Adhika month, so a leap Shravana pushes Raksha Bandhan into the true Shravana that follows.

On the day

Open the panchang for your city and the date for: sunrise and sunset, which define where aparahna falls; the exact start and end of the Purnima; the Bhadra window and the Moon’s sign. Those are the four numbers the local decision actually turns on, and all of them vary with location in a way the national date does not.