Dhanteras 2025 Sat 18 Oct
Dhanteras puja muhurat in New Delhi: 19:16–20:19 IST
Festival · 30 cities, each on its own sunrise and sunset, in its own time
When is Dhanteras 2025?
Saturday 18 October
Kartika Krishna Trayodashi (purnimanta) · Ashwina Krishna Trayodashi (amanta)
Dhanteras puja muhurat: what time?
Dhanteras puja muhurat: pradosha, 17:48–20:19. Within it Vrishabha, a fixed (sthira) lagna, rises in the east from 19:16 to 20:19.
Dhanteras puja muhurat in 30 cities
Times in each city’s own zone.
India
Nepal
Gulf
South-East Asia
Another place?
Opens Dhanteras 2025 for that place
Dhanteras 2025 by state and country
Each opens Dhanteras 2025 there: the date and each city’s Dhanteras puja muhurat.
States and territories of India
- Andaman and Nicobar
- Andhra Pradesh
- Arunachal Pradesh
- Assam
- Bihar
- Chhattisgarh
- Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu
- Goa
- Gujarat
- Haryana
- Himachal Pradesh
- Jammu and Kashmir
- Jharkhand
- Karnataka
- Kerala
- Ladakh
- Lakshadweep
- Madhya Pradesh
- Maharashtra
- Manipur
- Meghalaya
- Mizoram
- Nagaland
- Odisha
- Punjab
- Rajasthan
- Sikkim
- Tamil Nadu
- Telangana
- Tripura
- Uttar Pradesh
- Uttarakhand
- West Bengal
Countries
Why is Dhanteras celebrated? The katha
Dhanteras, the thirteenth day of the waning moon, opens the five days of Diwali: homes are cleaned, metal vessels bought or polished, Lakshmi worshipped in the evening, and a lamp lit for Yama.
A story Underhill records tells of King Haima, whose son was born under a prophecy: a snake would bite him on the fourth day after his wedding. To cheat fate the boy was kept in rooms built against snakes on an island in the Yamuna, yet on the fateful day a snake came out of the king's own sneeze, and the boy was bitten and died.
Even Yama's messengers, who came for the boy, were moved, and they asked their lord whether such deaths could be prevented. Yama answered that lamps lit every evening from this thirteenth day until the second day after the new moon would keep a violent death away.
So on Dhanteras evening many households set a lamp outside the door for Yama. Merchants also close their year's accounts and worship their account books and coins with Lakshmi, the giver of wealth.
Sources: M. M. Underhill, The Hindu Religious Year (1921), pp. 59–61
Dhanteras puja vidhi and samagri
On the thirteenth of Kartika's dark half the house and its doorway are cleaned, and new metal vessels are bought or the old ones polished, for the day is named for dhana, wealth. In the evening Lakshmi is worshipped with the coins or the new vessel, and offered roli and rice, flowers, sweets and a ghee lamp; merchants worship their account books with her. A clay lamp is then set outside the door for Yama, for in the story Underhill records Yama says that lamps lit from this evening to the second day after the new moon keep an untimely death from the house.
New Delhi · IST
Sources: P. V. Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, vol. V, pt. 1 (BORI, 1958), pp. 195–196; M. M. Underhill, The Hindu Religious Year (1921), p. 59
Why is Dhanteras on Sat 18 Oct?
In New Delhi
Dhanteras is on Sat 18 Oct: Trayodashi holds all of pradosha that evening, and no other.
Dhanteras puja muhurat: pradosha, 17:48–20:19. Within it Vrishabha, a fixed (sthira) lagna, rises in the east from 19:16 to 20:19.
Trayodashi holds all of pradosha, 17:48–20:19. Trayodashi: 12:19 to 13:52 Sun.
Trayodashi ended at 13:52; pradosha is Chaturdashi.
One row per day, on one clock (IST). Band: the tithi. Box: Pradosha. Light strip: day; dark strip: night.
Dhanteras puja is done in pradosha, the 3 muhurtas after sunset. Trayodashi runs from 12:19 on Sat 18 Oct to 13:52 on Sun 19 Oct, so only Saturday’s pradosha (17:48–20:19) falls within it. No text giving Dhanteras’s time was found; pradosha is Tithika’s convention.
The rule
Kartika Krishna Trayodashi (purnimanta) · Ashwina Krishna Trayodashi (amanta)
Dhanteras puja is done in pradosha, the 3 muhurtas after sunset.
- Smarta
- the evening whose pradosha Trayodashi holds: Tithika’s convention, since no text gives the time.
- Vaishnava
- the Smarta day.
Each city’s date and times are worked out at its own sunrise and sunset; each city’s page draws the reason.