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Svosthani Festival Starts
By KTM Metro Reporter in Kathmandu
The month-long Svosthani worship start on the full moon day of Poush and ends on the full moon day of Magha following the indigenous calendar called Nepal Sambat. Svosthani is a Hindu Goddess with four hands holding a trident, a spinning wheel, a spear and a lotus flower. On the first day of the festival, devotees take an early morning dip in the cold water of holy rivers across the country. However, the main holy place for this festival is on the bank of the Shali River in Sankhu about 20 km north east of Kathmandu.
Hundreds of women and men devotees camp at the Shali River and make offerings to Goddess Svosthani and Madhavnarayan for a month, and listen to the story of Svosthani every day for the month. They take a dip in the water of the Shali River in the morning and make offering to the Madhavnarayan in the afternoon and eat a single vegetarian meal and listen to the Svosthani story in the evening. Nepalese Hindu devotees believe that Goddess Svosthani meets their wishes if they make offerings to the goddess during this month-long devotion to Her.
The unique feature of the festival is that all family members sit together to listen to the story of Svosthani. Someone reads out a chapter of the Svosthani story at every Hindu and Buddhist household in the Kathmandu Valley for the month-long devotion to Svosthani. The story is about the creation of the earth, then about the first spouse called Satidevi of Lord Shiva, and then the second spouse called Parvati, their sons Ganesh and Kumar, and finally the story of mundane dweller Navraj and his spouse. Most of the events described in the story are in the Kathmandu Valley particularly at the Shali River in Sankhu: northeast of Kathmandu, and at the Shleshmantak forest at Gaushala in Kathmandu.
