PARV 10 OF 30 · SAWAN
मधुश्रावणी
Sawan Krishna Panchami to Shukla Tritiya, fourteen days (July–August)
"नव कनिया के पहिल सावन"
Katha · The story
Madhushravani is the festival of the first married year and it belongs to Mithila alone. The new bride spends the fourteen days at her naihar. Every dawn she and her friends gather flowers and leaves from the gardens of the tola, every evening the women sit around a painted nag-nagin and a clay Gauri and listen to the kathas: of Shiva's marriage to Gauri, of Bihula who sailed her husband's body down the river to win him back from the snake goddess Manasa, of the nag and his wife. Fourteen evenings, fourteen stories.
On the last day comes the tema, the moment everyone waits for and dreads: a burning wick is touched to the bride's knees and the size of the blister foretells the strength of her husband's love. The sasural sends a load of gifts, saris, fruit, sweets, and the whole tola comes to see them laid out.
Mahatva · Significance
It is the bride's formal entry into the women's ritual life of Mithila, learning the kathas and the drawings she will one day teach. The snake stories tie it to the monsoon and to Manasa, the serpent goddess who guards the house in Sawan. The fourteen days at the naihar are also, plainly, a holiday with her mother before the sasural becomes home.
"सावन मास बरसे जलधार, नव कनिया के मधुश्रावणी"
A line everyone at the festival knows
Vidhi · How it is done in Malinagar
Lava, dahi, sweets from the sasural, and kheer on the final day.
The arpan drawings made for Madhushravani are the root of what the world calls Madhubani painting.