[INDOLOGY] the meaning of Daśaharā

[Asko Parpola]

Dear Lubomir, the word goes back to the Sanskrit  daśāha-, ’ten-day period’, a compound of daśa- ’ten’ + ahar- ‘day’. In Vedic religion, chandoma-daśāha is the ten-day period before the final mahāvrata in a yearly rite of ādityānām ayana (Pañcaviṁśa-Brāhmaṇa 25,1,1.13). The term daśāha- seems to occur only in this variant of the yearly rite, in the normal gavām ayana, the texts use the synonym daśarātra for the ten-day period in the middle of the dvādaśāha ’twelve-day period’, which occurs in gavām ayana before the mahāvrata without the first and last day of the dvādaśāha (PB 4,8,5 - 4,9,19; 24,20,1). In Hindi, daśahrā- denotes especially “the tenth day of the bright half of the month Āśvin; the celebrations in honour of Durgā held on this day (vijaya-daśamī) as a culmination of the Durgāpūjā festival” (McGregor, Hindi-English dictionary,1993, p. 484). In my book “The Roots of Hinduism” (2015), p. 249 ff. I suggest that the daśahrā continues the Vedic "tenth day” + mahāvrata.

With best wishes, Asko

> On 18 Dec 2023, at 20.17, Lubomír Ondračka via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> I have an apparently very trivial question, but I have not found the answer in my sources.
> 
> What is the meaning of the name of the autumn festival Daśaharā?
> 
> All the textual references I have found are to the summer festival in the month of Jyeṣṭha. Here the name is clear: daśaharā is [a day (tithi)] destroying (harā) the ten (daśa) [sins]. The sources mostly refer to a verse in the Brahmapurāṇa:
> 
> śuklapakṣasya daśamī jyeṣṭhe māsi dvijottamāḥ /
> harate daśa pāpāni tasmād daśaharā smṛtā // BrP_63.15 // (Gretil)
> 
> In other sources it is related to the descent of the Ganges, so we have the bathing festival of Ganga Dussehra in summer.
> 
> 
> If we understand the construction of the name of the autumn (Āśvin) festival in the same way, namely daśaharā = "[the tithi] removing/destroying (harā) the ten (daśa) [X]", what is X here?
> 
> I once read in a secondary source that what is being destroyed here is the ten heads of Rāvaṇa. That would be a nice explanation, but I have not found any textual source for it. Is this really the standard meaning? And is there any textual evidence for it?
> 
> But even if this were correct, it would only explain the Rāmaistic form of the festival, not the Śākta form (Durgā celebration).
> 
> I would be grateful for your explanations and their textual references.
> 
> Best,
> Lubomir
> 
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology