Jitiya

The central day is a strict nirjala fast — neither food nor water — held for roughly 24 to 36 hours for the long life of one’s children. At a home altar the mothers worship Jimutavahana, a figure traditionally made of kusha grass, set in water or an earthen pot and dressed in yellow or red.

Beside it they set small clay or cow-dung figures of a female kite (chil) and jackal (siyar) — the creatures of the evening’s katha — marked with sindoor and offered incense, lamp, rice, flowers and fruit. It is among the most demanding vows of the Maithil year.

The vrat is incomplete without its two kathas. The first is Jimutavahana — the compassionate prince (hero of Harsha’s 7th-century play Nagananda) who, finding a Naga mother whose son Shankhachuda is owed to the eagle Garuda, lies on the sacrifice-rock in the youth’s place; Garuda, moved by his selflessness, vows to stop devouring serpents — and from that protective compassion the fast for children’s long life is said to flow.

The second is the Chilho-Siyarin (eagle and jackal) tale: both she-creatures vow to keep Jitiya, but the jackal breaks the fast while the eagle holds firm. Reborn as sisters, the eagle’s children thrive and the jackal’s are lost — until faithful observance restores them. It teaches that the vow must be kept faultlessly.

On Navami morning, once the tithi ends and the paran muhurta arrives, the mothers break the long nirjala fast — in Mithila with the festival’s own rustic foods: noni (nuni) saag and marua (ragi) roti, with jhor-bhaat (rice and a thin curry), often fish, and sweet potato.

The deliberately iron- and fibre-rich foods both restore the body after a day without food or water and mark the return to ordinary life — the demanding vow now offered in full, and the children blessed with long life.

Jitiya is an ancient women’s vrat of the eastern Gangetic plain; its hero, the prince Jimutavahana, is the subject of Emperor Harsha’s seventh-century Sanskrit play Nagananda — a real textual anchor. Two devotional stories give the fast meaning: Jimutavahana offers his own body to Garuda in place of a serpent youth, the archetype of selfless protection of another’s child; and the eagle and the jackal (Chilho-Siyarin) both vow to keep Jitiya, but the jackal breaks the fast, and the contrasting fates of their reborn children teach why the fast must be kept without lapse. Across Bihar and the Maithil diaspora it remains very widely kept — a roughly 24-hour waterless fast, a point of fierce maternal pride and real endurance.