Pandit Booking & Temples in Bihar

Ritual geography of Bihar

Bihar is four ritual regions rather than one. Mithila in the north-east keeps its own karmakanda — its own manuals, its own commentators, and marriages settled against the Panji genealogical registers — with Darbhanga and Madhubani at its centre. Magadh in the south, around Patna, Gaya and Nalanda, is Magahi-speaking and is where the ancestral rites are performed for the whole country. Bhojpur in the west runs in Bhojpuri and carries the largest body of ritual song in the state. Anga in the east, around Bhagalpur, keeps a Shaiva calendar on the Ganga.

The state's two great seasons are Chhath, kept on every river and tank across all four regions over four days, and Pitru Paksha, when Gaya fills for a fortnight with families from every part of India. Neither is a local festival in any ordinary sense: the first is the state's own and the second is the country's, held here.

For a booking that means the useful question is which region a household's custom comes from rather than which district it lives in. Patna in particular is assembled out of all four, so two families on one street will differ on the order of a wedding's days and on what is offered at a shraddh.