Annual remembrance

The dates of a loved one’s annual śrāddham

Each year a family remembers those who have passed on the tithi — or, in Kerala, the star — of their passing. Enter the date, and the time and place if you know them, and this page works out the coming dates for the San Francisco Bay Area under the three ways families keep it. Please confirm the date with Sri Kumar Gurukkal before you plan the rite.

The tithi is the one at the moment of passing. Without the time, every tithi that touched that day is shown.

Only to read the time correctly. The dates are always worked out for the Bay Area, where the rite will be kept.

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How these dates are worked out

  • The tithi is the lunar day prevailing at the moment of passing, which is why the time matters. Most accounts agree; some families use the tithi printed for that day instead.
  • The day each year is the one on which that tithi covers the afternoon period called aparāhṇa — the fourth fifth of the daytime — at the Bay Area. When it covers the afternoon on two days, the day with the larger share is shown and the other is named; when it covers neither, both days are shown for Gurukkal to decide.
  • By the lunar month: the same tithi in the same lunar month. A month counted to the new moon (amānta) and one counted to the full moon (pūrṇimānta) give the same day; only the month’s name differs, and both are shown.
  • By the Tamil month: the same tithi within the same solar month. When it falls twice in that month both are shown; many families keep the second.
  • By the star (Kerala): the same nakṣatra in the same Malayalam month. The star’s full span is shown, because which of its days is kept is not settled by any source this site found.
  • Added (adhika) months are passed over for the ordinary month of the same name.
  • The first year is reckoned differently, with rites that vary by family, so a first anniversary is shown only as an estimate.

Everything is computed in your browser with this site’s own Panchāṅgam engine. How the Panchāṅgam is calculated →

What only your family priest can settle

These differ between families and traditions, and this page does not decide them: which reckoning your family keeps; the day when the tithi touches the afternoon of two days equally or of neither day; for Kerala families, which day of the star; what happens in an added or a lost month; how the first year is kept; and whether a passing in India is reckoned for India or for where the rite is kept. Ask Sri Kumar Gurukkal.

He performs the annual śrāddham, tarpaṇam and the Pitṛ Pakṣa observances; he does not perform funeral rites (antyeṣṭi). The ancestor-rite dates for the Bay Area, including Mahālaya Amāvāsyā, are on their own page.

Sources for these rules (9)

The rules above were researched for this site and are written in our words. Several of the sources are practitioners’ discussions rather than published texts, which is one more reason every date here is to be confirmed with Gurukkal. None of this page has been reviewed by him.

  1. Essence of Dharma Sindhu, ch. 26: Śrāddha — kamakoti.org — Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham
  2. Essence of Dharma Sindhu, ch. 5: Tithi and vrata decisions — kamakoti.org — Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham
  3. Viṣṇu Smṛti, ch. XXI — Sacred Books of the East, vol. 7 (tr. J. Jolly)
  4. Śrāddham and funeral services — Sri Bhaktha Anjaneya Temple, Maryland
  5. The Tamil way of fixing the annual tithi — Advaita-l (practitioners’ discussion, 2019)
  6. How to determine the śrāddha tithi — Pandit Mahesh Shastri (blog, 2008)
  7. Śrāddha vidhi — rules of śrāddha — P. R. Ramachander, compiled from Tamil ritual books (2011)
  8. Adhika māsam — Kinchitkaram Trust — Dharma Sandeha
  9. Śrāddha — Wikipedia (citing P. V. Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. IV)