Pongal பொங்கல்

Overview

Pongal is Tamil Nadu’s harvest festival, four days around the Sun’s entry into Makara in mid-January. Its centre is the second day, Thai Pongal — the first of the Tamil month of Thai — when a clay pot of new rice, milk and jaggery is set to boil in the open, facing east, and the household waits for it to boil over, calling Pongalo Pongal! as it does. The day before is Bhogi, the clearing-out; the day after is Mattu Pongal, for the cattle; the fourth is Kaanum Pongal, for going out and visiting. The Sun is the festival’s deity, and the field its subject.

The four days

Bhogi. Old things are thrown out and burned in a bonfire before dawn — the year’s clutter, and the sense of a fresh start. Houses are cleaned and whitewashed; the kolam (rice-flour drawing) is laid at the door. In Andhra and Telangana the same day is kept as Bhogi with the same fire.

Thai Pongal. At sunrise a new clay pot, its neck tied with turmeric and ginger plants, is set on a fire in the courtyard; milk is boiled, rice and jaggery added, and the moment it froths over the family shouts Pongalo Pongal. The sweet pongal (sakkarai pongal) is offered to the Sun on a banana leaf with sugarcane, turmeric, coconut and bananas, and eaten. The day is the Tamil new year in the older reckoning and the beginning of Uttarayana.

Mattu Pongal. Cattle are washed, their horns painted, garlands and bells hung on them; they are fed the pongal and walked through the village. The Govardhan story of Krishna and the cowherds is told in some places. Jallikattu, the bull-taming sport of Madurai and the southern districts, is held on this day.

Kaanum Pongal. Kaanum is “to see”: families go out, to the riverbank or the town, sisters pray for brothers, and the leftovers of the festival are eaten in the open.

Story and scripture

Pongal is older than its stories; Sangam poetry speaks of Thai and the harvest, and the festival’s form belongs to the agricultural year rather than to a Purana. The Govardhan lila (Bhagavata Purana 10.24–25) is attached to Mattu Pongal in Tamil telling, and a story of Shiva’s bull Nandi, sent to earth with a message and getting it wrong — telling people to eat daily and bathe monthly instead of the reverse — is told to explain why cattle plough the fields for humans and why Mattu Pongal honours them.

How the day is kept, and jaap

The Thai Pongal offering is to Surya: the arghya at sunrise, the twelve names, and the pongal on the leaf. Households that keep a daily count keep a Surya mantra on the day; the Surya Chalisa is a North Indian text and not traditional in Tamil Nadu, though it is linked below for readers who use it. There is no fixed fast.

Regional forms

• Tamil Nadu: as described; the state’s largest holiday, with a four-day break.
• Sri Lanka’s Tamil community, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius: Thai Pongal kept as in Tamil Nadu.
• Andhra and Telangana: Bhogi, Sankranti, Kanuma — the same three days under Telugu names.
• Kerala: the same ingress is Makara Vilakku at Sabarimala rather than a harvest day.
• Everywhere else: Makar Sankranti.

The dates

Thai Pongal is the day of the Sun’s sidereal entry into Makara — the next day if the ingress is after sunset — and the other three days are counted from it. The table gives the four days computed for New Delhi’s sunset rule; Tamil almanacs apply the same ingress and will agree unless the ingress is within minutes of sunset.