Sharodiya Durgotsabআইআইএসসি 2026মহালয়া Mahalaya
আশ্বিনের শারদপ্রাতে
Mahalaya is not part of the Puja. It is the day before the Puja becomes possible, when the fortnight of the ancestors ends and the fortnight of the goddess begins. For most Bengalis it begins with a voice on a radio that has been saying the same words since before their grandparents were born.
until Mahishasuramardini, Saturday 10 October, 4 AM
One file with the broadcast and every Puja day in it. The broadcast carries a reminder ten minutes before four, which is the closest a website can get to setting your alarm.
The wireless
Ten Akashvani stations, read out of Prasar Bharati's own player. Turn the knob and the static clears as you come onto one. Listening live means going to Akashvani's own player and choosing the station there, because their terms forbid anyone else transmitting the feed and they publish no direct link to a single station. Mahishasuramardini itself plays here, from the rights holder's own upload.
Switch it on, then find the station. The hiss tells you how close you are.
Akashvani Shantiniketan is live only. Open Akashvani for it.
শান্তিনিকেতন Medium wave From Tagore's own town. Worth finding on a dial for the same reason it is worth going there.
Mahishasuramardini runs about ninety minutes from four in the morning on Mahalaya. Akashvani Kolkata originates it and other stations carry it, and the 1966 recording plays below at any hour.
The hiss is generated here. The programme is Saregama's own upload, whose volume the dial controls, because the recording is theirs and the broadcast is Prasar Bharati's. For the live signal on the morning itself, the Akashvani button opens their player.
Mahishasuramardini. The broadcast belongs to Prasar Bharati and the 1966 recording to Saregama India Ltd, so it plays here from Saregama's own upload rather than from a copy of ours. Script by Bani Kumar, music by Pankaj Kumar Mullick, recitation by Birendra Krishna Bhadra.
ইতিহাস The story
Every year since the 1930s, and identical since the recording was made. Bengal has treated any attempt to improve it as a provocation, and has been proved right once already.
Akashvani's Calcutta station begins putting out a pre-dawn programme of Chandi recitation, song and narration. It is live, because there is nothing yet to record it onto. The exact first year is genuinely disputed: 1931 is the popular answer, All India Radio's own writing says 1936 or 1937, and nobody has produced a schedule that settles it.
Bani Kumar writes the script. Pankaj Kumar Mullick composes and directs the music. Birendra Krishna Bhadra recites. Around them sing Dwijen Mukhopadhyay, Supriti Ghosh, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay and others, in a studio, before sunrise, every year.
The last live performance is usually placed in 1962 and the definitive studio recording in 1966. From then on the voice a Bengali hears at four in the morning is the same voice their grandparents heard performed live, which is the whole reason it cannot be replaced.
All India Radio replaces the programme with a new production fronted by the film star Uttam Kumar. The reaction is immediate and furious. Offices are stoned, the new version is abandoned, and the original recording returns within the same season. It has not been touched since.
Tarpan, on the riverbank. Water offered to the dead of one's own family, and then to everyone who has no one left to offer it for them. In Kolkata the ghats fill before dawn; in Bengaluru people find whatever water there is.
And in the workshops, Chokkhu Daan. The artisan fasts, and paints the eyes last, in a fixed order, the forehead eye after the other two. Until that stroke the figure is clay. After it, she can be seen, and can see.
Which is why the countdown on this page runs to Mahalaya first, and only then to the first day of the Puja. Nothing has begun yet. Everything is about to.
A common confusion worth clearing up. Mahalaya falls on the new moon that closes Pitri Paksha, the fortnight of the ancestors. Devi Paksha begins with it. The Puja itself starts six days later on Shashthi.
So nobody worships the goddess on Mahalaya. They invite her.
জানা অজানা Did you know
The Kalika Purana's Rudhiradhyaya, its 'blood chapter', is the rare Puranic text to discuss human sacrifice, and it hedges the practice about with conditions until almost nothing is left of it. It may be done only with a prince's consent, and only before a war or in imminent danger. Anyone physically disabled, anyone related to a Brahmin, and anyone unwilling to die is unfit for it.
কালিকাপুরাণের রুধিরাধ্যায় অর্থাৎ 'রক্তের অধ্যায়' সেই বিরল পুরাণ-অংশ যেখানে নরবলির আলোচনা আছে, কিন্তু শর্তের ভারে তা কার্যত অসম্ভব করে তোলা হয়েছে। রাজপুত্রের সম্মতি ছাড়া হবে না, আর তা-ও কেবল যুদ্ধের আগে বা আসন্ন বিপদের সময়ে। শারীরিক প্রতিবন্ধী, ব্রাহ্মণের আত্মীয়, আর মরতে অনিচ্ছুক — এরা কেউই এই আচারের যোগ্য নয়।
Bhabananda Majumdar founded the Nadia Raj in 1606 under Jahangir and began a celebrated Durga Puja at his capital, Matiyari. His descendant Raja Krishnachandra Roy, who ruled 1728-1782, moved the seat to Krishnanagar and expanded the puja into one of Bengal's grandest.
জাহাঙ্গিরের আমলে ১৬০৬ সালে ভবানন্দ মজুমদার নদিয়া রাজ প্রতিষ্ঠা করেন এবং তাঁর রাজধানী মাটিয়ারিতে খ্যাতনামা দুর্গাপুজো শুরু করেন। তাঁর বংশধর রাজা কৃষ্ণচন্দ্র রায় (১৭২৮-১৭৮২) রাজধানী কৃষ্ণনগরে সরিয়ে আনেন, আর পুজোকে বাংলার অন্যতম জাঁকজমকপূর্ণ উৎসবে পরিণত করেন।
The Calcutta Gazette of 20 October 1814 records, 'The Hindu holidays of the Doorga Poojah began yesterday and will continue until the 25th instant.' The festival was already a fixture of the colonial calendar.
১৮১৪ সালের ২০ অক্টোবরের ক্যালকাটা গেজেটে লেখা, 'হিন্দুদের দুর্গাপূজার ছুটি গতকাল শুরু হয়েছে এবং চলবে এই মাসের ২৫ তারিখ পর্যন্ত।' উৎসবটি তখনই ঔপনিবেশিক পঞ্জিকার স্থায়ী অঙ্গ।
জাগো তুমি জাগো, জাগো দুর্গা, জাগো দশপ্রহরণধারিণী
Wake, you who wake. Wake, Durga, wake, bearer of ten weapons.
Mahishasuramardini, All India Radio, from the 1930s
