Purnima 2027 List: Snan-Daan Days and Vrat Evenings

There are twelve full moons in 2027, so twelve Purnimas, but a Purnima list has to answer two questions, not one. Which morning wakes in the Purnima? And which evening does? In 2027 the two name the same day only four times. The list gives both, and says where neither reads cleanly.

Two Readings of One Tithi

The sunrise reading is the ordinary panchang rule: the day takes the tithi current at sunrise. It gives the date most panchangs print as the Purnima, and in north Indian calendars it is the morning of snan-daan, the ritual bath and the gifts that follow it. The evening reading asks instead whether the Purnima is running at sunset. Calendars that print a Purnima vrat (upavas) separately generally put it on the day whose evening is in the Purnima, since a full Moon rises at about sunset. For that test the page uses the sunset moment the site’s festival generator applies to its evening observances, in New Delhi, and it takes a sunset as decided only when the Purnima holds it, or misses it, by 30 minutes or more. Where two evenings qualify, or none does by that margin, it says so and does not choose.

The 2027 List (पूर्णिमा 2027)

Every Purnima ends at its full moon, taken from the site’s DE421 lunation table. Its start is copied from a festival row where one exists; the other three starts come from the site’s lunar code, never more than 1 minute out on the 86 tithi spans the festival tables print. Every sunrise reading in the table has a margin of at least 30 minutes, far more than that error. Purnima is a bright-fortnight tithi, so amanta and purnimanta calendars give it the same month name; the month is the one opened by the preceding new moon, named from the Sun’s sidereal sign at that moment, a count that reproduces all 43 dated rows of the 2027 festival table.

The Nakshatras Behind the Month Names

The panchang’s month names are borrowed from nakshatras: Chaitra from Chitra, Kartika from Krittika, Pausha from Pushya and so on, each month taking the name of the nakshatra its full moon falls in or near. The lunation table lets that be checked against 2027. Eight of the twelve full moons fall in the month’s own nakshatra, among them Paush Purnima in Pushya, Magh Purnima in Magha and Phalguna Purnima in Uttara Phalguni. Three fall one nakshatra further on (Vaishakha Purnima in Anuradha, Jyeshtha Purnima in Moola and Shravana Purnima in Dhanishta), and Ashwina Purnima falls one short, in Revati, the nakshatra before Ashwini. The month itself is fixed by the Sun’s sign, so the nakshatra keeps close to the name without being bound to it.

February: A Purnima No Sunrise Holds

The Magh Purnima begins at 08:00 on 20 February, 65 minutes after that morning’s sunrise, and ends at the full moon, 04:53 on 21 February, 121 minutes before the next. Saturday 20 February dawns on Shukla Chaturdashi and Sunday 21 February on Krishna Pratipada; the sunrise reading finds no Purnima day at all. This is kshaya. The evening reading has no such trouble: the tithi holds the whole of the 20 February evening, so a calendar keeping the vrat by the evening has its day. How a sunrise-based calendar fills the gap is worked through on the Magh Purnima 2027 page.

June: Two Sunrises, One Evening

The Jyeshtha Purnima is the opposite case. It begins 48 minutes before sunrise on Friday 18 June and is still running 51 minutes after sunrise on Saturday 19 June, so two mornings wake in it: vriddhi. The sunrise rule alone does not choose between them. The evening reading does, since only the 18 June sunset falls inside the tithi; by the 19 June evening it has been over for hours.

July: Two Evenings, No Ruling

The Ashadha Purnima, which the table keeps as Guru Purnima on Sunday 18 July, is a long tithi. It begins 32 minutes before sunset on 17 July and lasts past sunset on 18 July, so both evenings pass the test, and the test on its own cannot choose; the page leaves both in the table. The first margin is narrow, too, and further east it fails, as the city table shows. Guru Purnima itself goes by sunrise and is not affected.

January and March: Evenings Too Close to Call

The Paush Purnima ends at 17:47 on 22 January, 4 minutes before that day’s New Delhi sunset, and began well after the sunset before. It misses one evening by minutes and the other by hours. The Phalguna Purnima begins at 18:22 on 21 March, 10 minutes ahead of that evening’s sunset. Both minutes are DE421 values, but margins that small turn on the city. The festival table does rule on March, by its own test: it puts Holika Dahan on Sunday 21 March under the rule “Purnima at pradosh, Bhadra excluded,” with the whole pradosh window inside the tithi, and Holi on Monday 22 March, the sunrise day.

Where the Festival Rows Sit

Seven Purnima rows in the 2027 table are decided by sunrise and sit on the sunrise day: Paush Purnima on 22 January, Hanuman Jayanti on 20 April, Buddha Purnima on 20 May, Guru Purnima on 18 July, Raksha Bandhan on 17 August, the start of Pitru Paksha on 15 September and Kartik Purnima on 14 November. For Buddha Purnima, Raksha Bandhan and Kartik Purnima, the evening reading falls a day earlier. Sharad Purnima uses neither reading. Its row tests the tithi at midnight (“tithi at nishita kaal”), and the Purnima, which begins 56 minutes after sunset on 14 October, holds that midnight, so the table gives Thursday 14 October, a day before both the sunrise day and the evening reading.

The Close Moments in Six Cities

The tithi changes at the same instant everywhere; sunrise and sunset do not. In Kolkata and Guwahati, where the sun sets earlier, the Paush Purnima is still running at sunset by half an hour or more, so there the evening reading has a day. In the same two cities the March sun sets before the Purnima begins. On 17 July Guwahati sees sunset before the Purnima too, which leaves one evening there; and the June vriddhi is itself thin in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Guwahati.

For another town, the panchang calculator gives its sunrise, sunset and tithi.

Other 2027 Lists

The new moons, with their weekday names and afternoon test, are in the Amavasya 2027 list; the Ekadashis, four tithis before each Purnima and Amavasya, in the Ekadashi 2027 list; and the Trayodashi evenings in Pradosh Vrat 2027. Every Purnima sunrise in the site’s tables is on the Purnima tithi page, and the festivals are on the festival pages and in the 2027 festival calendar. In Hindi: पूर्णिमा 2027 सूची: स्नान-दान के दिन और व्रत की शाम.