Narsimha Jayanti

Narsimha Jayanti — Nrusinh Chaudas — falls on Vaishakh Sud 14, the fourteenth day of the bright fortnight of Vaishakh, at the height of early summer. It commemorates the appearance of Bhagwan Nrusinh, the fourth avatar of Shri Vishnu, half man and half lion, who burst from a stone pillar at sandhya — the twilight hour — to protect his five-year-old bhakta Prahlad. Hiranyakashipu had won a boon that he could be slain by neither man nor beast, neither by day nor by night, neither indoors nor out, by no weapon, on neither earth nor sky.

Yet when he mocked his son — 'Is your Hari in this pillar?' — Prahlad answered without hesitation that he was. Prabhu honoured that faith to the letter: as Nrusinh, neither man nor animal, at dusk which is neither day nor night, on the threshold which is neither in nor out, upon his own lap, with his nails, he ended the tyrant — and then grew gentle in an instant, gathering the child into his embrace. Because the pragatya was at twilight, the jayanti is observed into the evening, its utsav kept at the very hour Prabhu appeared.

Nrusinh Chaudas is one of the four Jayanti vrats Shri Mahaprabhuji included in the seva-pranalika of Pushtimarg — alongside Janmashtami, Ram Navami and Vaman Dwadashi — for on these days Prabhu himself performed his pushti-leela. Vaishnavs keep a vrat through the day, and in the haveli the panchamrut snan and janmotsav are celebrated in the evening, the hour of the pragatya. The shringar carries the bhav of the svarup: in the haveli tradition Thakorji is adorned with the vagh-nakh (tiger-claw) ornament and vyaghramukhi kada, while summer's cooling seva — chandan, light vastra, sheetal bhog — continues around the utsav.

The heart of the day is bhakta-vatsalya: Prabhu does not weigh, delay or deliberate for his bhakta. Where a child's simple faith says 'He is here', there he is — even in a pillar of stone. Prahlad is the model of the daivi jiva: surrounded by every hostility, he neither argued nor feared, but held to smaran alone. For the Vaishnav who has taken aashray of Shrinathji, this jayanti renews one assurance each year: the jiva who has become Prabhu's own is never, in any circumstance, abandoned.