सनातन पुस्तकालय Sanatan Cultural Library

Jhulan Yatra celebrates one of the most tender of Krishna's pastimes: in the rain-freshened groves of Vrindavan, the gopis seat Radha and Krishna on a flower-decked swing and rock them gently while peacocks call and the monsoon clouds gather. The swing (jhulan) is an old and beloved image in Indian devotion — the rains are the season of swings hung from trees — and the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition of Bengal, following Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, raised this pastime into an annual five-day festival of the bright fortnight of Shravana. In Odisha the festival belongs to the Jagannath tradition: since the great deities of Puri do not leave the sanctum for this occasion, their festive representative Madanmohana is carried out and swung in a beautifully decorated jhulan mandap. The festival closes on Jhulan Purnima, the same full moon as Raksha Bandhan, and in the Gaudiya calendar that day is also honoured as the appearance day of Lord Balarama.

For five evenings, from Shravana Shukla Ekadashi to Purnima, temples erect a swing of silver, brass or flower-wrapped wood in a pavilion or courtyard. Small utsava (festival) images of Radha and Krishna are seated on it, and devotees take turns pulling the swing's cord or gently pushing it — an act felt as personal service to the divine couple — while kirtan parties sing monsoon songs and jhulan padavali, the swing-poems of the Vaishnava poets. The deities are dressed in fresh finery each evening; offerings run to seasonal fruit, kheer and sweets, and the pavilions are lit with rows of lamps. Nabadwip and Mayapur in West Bengal keep the festival on a grand scale, as do the Radha-Krishna temples of Kolkata; in Puri the Jhulana Yatra of Madanmohana draws crowds to the temple each evening. In household shrines a small swing, even a decorated cradle, serves the same loving purpose.

This is a festival a Canadian home can keep with real charm. During the five evenings ending on the Raksha Bandhan full moon, a small swing — improvised from a decorated basket, a doll's swing or a hanging planter frame — can hold the family's pictures or small murtis of Radha and Krishna. Family members take turns rocking the swing while singing a bhajan or playing kirtan recordings, and offer fruit or a simple sweet. ISKCON temples in Canadian cities, including the Ottawa area, generally celebrate Jhulan Yatra each evening of the fortnight's final days, and visiting one lets children swing the deities themselves. The tithis fall in late July or August; this site's calendar shows the exact Ottawa dates, and the closing purnima is the same evening the family ties rakhi — a natural double festival.