Mahavir Jayanti 2027 Date: Monday 19 April or Sunday 18th?

Mahavir Jayanti (महावीर जयंती), which Jain usage also calls Mahavir Janma Kalyanak, is kept on the thirteenth lunar day of Chaitra’s bright fortnight. Read by the sunrise at New Delhi, that Trayodashi belongs to Monday, 19 April 2027. The margin is thin, though. The tithi ends at 06:08 that morning, only 16 min after Delhi’s sunrise, and in Mumbai, Surat and Ahmedabad the Sun comes up after it has already ended. A calendar computed for those cities has no Trayodashi sunrise to print, and the date it offers instead is Sunday, 18 April 2027. Which of the two days your community keeps is decided by your sangh’s panchang, not by this page.

The Trayodashi: 07:42 on 18 April to 06:08 on 19 April

No row of the site’s 2027 festival table covers this tithi, so its two ends come from the site’s own tithi code. That code is checked against the opening and closing instants of all 86 festival-table rows that carry them, and never strays from them by more than 1 min. Here it puts the start of the Trayodashi at 07:42 on Sunday 18 April and its end at 06:08 on Monday 19 April, a run of 22 hr 26 min. The tithi after it, the Chaturdashi, closes at 04:51 on 20 April, the instant at which the table opens the Purnima of Hanuman Jayanti, which pins this Trayodashi to the bright half of Chaitra.

A tithi is an angle between the Moon and the Sun, so its start and end fall at one instant for the whole country. What changes from town to town is the local sunrise, and a sunrise-tithi calendar dates the day by whichever tithi is current at that moment.

Why Delhi Gets Monday

The daily panchang for New Delhi reads the Shukla Dwadashi at sunrise on 18 April (05:53), because the Trayodashi does not open until 1 hr 49 min later. On 19 April the Sun rises at 05:52, the Trayodashi still has 16 min to go, and that sunrise gives the day its tithi. On 20 April the morning already belongs to Purnima. A strict sunrise reading at Delhi therefore has one Trayodashi day, Monday, although almost the whole of the tithi will fall on Sunday.

Thirteen Cities on the Morning of 19 April

Sunrise on 19 April comes 1 hr 5 min later in Mumbai than in Kolkata. Each city below has been given its own sunrise from the solar routine behind the city panchang pages, tested against the Trayodashi’s 06:08 close. The list leans towards the west, where the tithi’s close and the local sunrise come nearest each other.

The table divides cleanly at both ends. Kolkata’s early dawn catches the tithi with 55 min to spare, and every city down to Indore holds it too, though from Jaipur on the margin is in single figures. At the other end Ahmedabad, Surat and Mumbai see the Sun only after the Chaturdashi has begun; Mumbai misses by 10 min. Three cities sit in between. On this working Bangalore’s sunrise catches the Trayodashi by 3 min, while Udaipur and Jodhpur miss it by 2 and 3. At that size the answer turns on details of method, such as the allowance a panchang makes for refraction or the exact coordinates it uses for the town, so a local almanac there could print either result without being in error.

Everywhere on the list the 18 April sunrise still has the Dwadashi, so no city gets a Trayodashi sunrise on Sunday. The fortnight is crowded in another way too: the Chaturdashi that follows closes before every one of these cities sees the Sun on 20 April, so that tithi holds no sunrise anywhere here either.

When No Sunrise Holds the Tithi

A tithi that opens after one sunrise and closes before the next is called kshaya, a lost tithi. A calendar that dates days strictly by sunrise then has to adopt some convention. The convention written into the generator behind this site’s festival tables is to keep such a tithi on the civil day on which it begins. For the western cities in the table that day is Sunday 18 April, the only day on which the Trayodashi will be current at all.

That is one convention among several, and it is not a Jain ruling. Jain panchangs are issued within the different traditions, Svetambara and Digambara and the gacchas and sects within them, and each sets its own dates by its own reckoning. In a year when the tithi clears or misses sunrise by a few minutes, published Jain calendars may not all agree. Whatever the date in your town, the calendar of your own sangh or temple is the one to follow; this page sets out the astronomy and leaves that choice to them.

Mahavira in Jain Tradition

Jain tradition counts Vardhamana Mahavira as the twenty-fourth and last Tirthankara of the present cycle. Its accounts, Svetambara and Digambara alike, place his birth at Kundagrama, also called Kshatriyakund, and both keep the birth on Chaitra Shukla Trayodashi. The Jain calendar marks five kalyanakas, or great events, in the life of each Tirthankara, and the birth is the one the name Janma Kalyanak refers to. On the day, Jain temples hold an abhisheka of the Mahavira image, and in many towns the community carries the image through the streets in procession. The order of the day and the readings differ between traditions and from one temple to another. The page reports these customs as Jain communities describe them and makes no claim about what keeping them does.

The Week Around It

In the Hindu festival table the same bright fortnight carries Ram Navami on Thursday 15 April, three days before the Trayodashi opens, and Hanuman Jayanti on Tuesday 20 April, the Purnima, the morning after Delhi’s Trayodashi day. How the whole lunar month is laid out, new moon to new moon, is on the Chaitra month 2027 page, and the nine nights that open the fortnight are on the Navratri 2027 dates page.

Mahavir Jayanti 2027 at a Glance

• Chaitra Shukla Trayodashi: 07:42 on Sunday 18 April to 06:08 on Monday 19 April (computed)
• By New Delhi’s sunrise (05:52): Monday, 19 April 2027, held by 16 min
• Where no sunrise holds it (Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai): kshaya; kept on the day it began, Sunday 18 April, under the site generator’s convention
• Too close to call: Bangalore, Udaipur and Jodhpur, all within 3 min
• The date to keep: the one in your sangh’s or temple’s panchang

The full month’s observances are on the April 2027 vrat and tyohar list, and the Purnima that follows sits with the year’s others on the Purnima 2027 list. Your own town’s sunrise for 19 April is on the panchang tool, and the festival hub indexes the observances in the site’s tables. In Hindi: महावीर जयंती 2027 कब है: सोमवार 19 या रविवार 18 अप्रैल.