Bhishma Ashtami 2027: Date, Midday Tarpan and Significance

Bhishma Ashtami (भीष्म अष्टमी) is the eighth lunar day of Magha’s bright half, the day the festival calendars keep in memory of Bhishma, the Kuru elder of the Mahabharata. In 2027 it falls on Sunday, 14 February 2027, the day after Ratha Saptami. Families that offer tarpan to Bhishma do so at midday by custom, so the question worth asking is not only which morning the Ashtami holds but which middle of the day. This year both questions have the same answer.

The Ashtami: 02:07 on 14 February to 00:41 on 15 February

The Ashtami begins where the Saptami ends, and the 2027 festival table prints that instant on its Ratha Saptami row: 02:07 on 14 February, in the small hours of Sunday. The close is not in any table, so it comes from the site’s tithi code, whose opening for this Ashtami lands within 1 minute of the table’s and which keeps that agreement over all 86 festival rows it is checked against. On that working the Ashtami ends at 00:41 on 15 February, less than an hour into the next civil day, having run 22 hours 34 minutes.

Sunrise and Midday, Three Days Running

A sunrise-tithi calendar dates the observance by the dawn. A calendar that follows the midday custom of the tarpan asks instead which tithi is current in the middle of daylight. To test the second reading this page takes one instant per day, halfway between that day’s sunrise and sunset. It is a test point, not a madhyahna window and not a time for the rite; almanacs that print a madhyahna span work it out for their own city, and this page gives none. At New Delhi:

• Saturday 13 February (sunrise 07:01, sunset 18:09): Shukla Saptami at sunrise, Shukla Saptami at midday
• Sunday 14 February (sunrise 07:00, sunset 18:10): Shukla Ashtami at sunrise, Shukla Ashtami at midday
• Monday 15 February (sunrise 06:59, sunset 18:11): Shukla Navami at sunrise, Shukla Navami at midday

The two readings never part company. The 13 February midday still belongs to the Saptami, since the Ashtami does not open until the following night; the 15 February sunrise comes hours after the Ashtami has given way to the Navami. That leaves Sunday 14 February as the only day with the Ashtami at dawn and at midday. By the time the Sun rises at 07:00 the tithi is already 4 hours 53 minutes old, and it is still current 6 hours 31 minutes after the 18:10 sunset.

Eleven Cities, Same Answer

Sunrise and sunset move by more than an hour across India, so the same two tests were run on each city’s own sunrise and sunset, using the solar function behind the city panchang pages. Each cell gives the tithi at sunrise, then the tithi at the midpoint of daylight.

Every row reads the same way. The earliest dawn on the list, Guwahati’s at 05:59, still finds the Ashtami 3 hours 52 minutes old, and the latest, Jammu’s at 07:15, finds it older. At the other end, the tithi is over at least 5 hours 18 minutes before any of these cities sees the sunrise of 15 February. There is no city here for which a local almanac would have reason to move the day. The same sunrise day appears against Magha on the Masik Durgashtami 2027 list, which marks this Magha Ashtami as Bhishma Ashtami.

Bhishma on the Bed of Arrows

The Mahabharata gives Bhishma a boon from his father Shantanu: death would come to him only when he chose it, the gift the later tradition calls iccha mrityu. In the epic’s account he falls on the tenth day of the war, pierced so thickly by Arjuna’s arrows that he lies on them as on a bed, and he declines to let go of life while the Sun is still on its southward course. He waits for Uttarayana. In the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas, which carry that wait, Yudhishthira comes to him for instruction on kingship, duty and conduct, and the Anushasana Parva contains the thousand names of Vishnu that he recites. The festival calendars set the anniversary of his departure on Magha Shukla Ashtami, and that is the day this page dates.

The Midday Tarpan (भीष्म तर्पण)

The observance at the centre of the day is a tarpan, an offering of water made to Bhishma by name. Household custom places it at midday. The reason the custom itself gives is Bhishma’s vow: sworn to celibacy for his father’s sake, he left no son of his own to offer water for him, and so the custom has householders offer it on his behalf. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana the rite goes by the name Bhishma Ashtami tarpanam. The words, the materials and who in the family makes the offering vary from house to house and are best taken from your own family priest or almanac. Nothing here says what the offering does for the one who makes it; the page records only the custom’s own account of why it is made.

Uttarayana: Two Ways of Counting

Astronomers put the Sun’s turn northward at the December solstice. The Indian calendrical tradition counts Uttarayana from the Sun’s entry into sidereal Capricorn instead, the ingress that the Makar Sankranti 2027 page is about. The site’s ingress table puts that entry at 21:05 IST on 14 January, 31 days before this Ashtami. By the Ashtami itself the Sun has moved on again, into sidereal Aquarius at 10:04 on 13 February, the morning before the tithi opens.

Bhishma Dwadashi, After Jaya Ekadashi

Calendars that also keep a Bhishma Dwadashi put it on the twelfth of the same bright half. The daily panchang gives New Delhi one Shukla Dwadashi sunrise in the fortnight, Thursday, 18 February 2027, four days after the Ashtami. The Ekadashi in between is Jaya Ekadashi on Wednesday 17 February, so the Bhishma Dwadashi morning is the same morning on which that fast is broken; the Jaya page works out how long the Dwadashi lasts. Telugu almanacs give that Ekadashi the name Bhishma Ekadashi. The rest of the month runs through the Magh month 2027 page, and Ratha Saptami 2027, the day before the Ashtami, has a festival page of its own.

Bhishma Ashtami 2027 at a Glance

• Day: Sunday, 14 February 2027, by sunrise and by midday, in every city tested
• Magha Shukla Ashtami: 02:07 on 14 February (festival table) to 00:41 on 15 February (computed)
• Sunrise and sunset on 14 February (New Delhi): 07:00 and 18:10
• Bhishma Dwadashi (sunrise tithi): Thursday, 18 February 2027
• Sun enters sidereal Capricorn: 21:05 IST on 14 January 2027

The other fasts and festivals of the month are on the February 2027 vrat and tyohar list. The panchang tool is limited to New Delhi; the 2026 and 2027 sunrise and sunset of other cities appear on the city panchang pages. The festival hub indexes the observances in the site’s festival tables. In Hindi: भीष्म अष्टमी 2027: तारीख, दोपहर का तर्पण और महत्व.