There is a deeper meaning to Akshaya Tritiya than just gold, date in 2013, story, gold rush, rate, india, festivals

There is a deeper meaning to Akshaya Tritiya than just gold, date in 2013, story. 

The gold rush of Akshaya Tritiya is now a phenomenon that manifests every year with a certainty that pays no heed to mundane changes in economic fortunes. But the observance of the auspicious day has in recent times shed its multiple characteristics and come to be viewed only as an auspicious day to buy gold.

Akshaya Tritiya is an important day in the Hindu calendar. It is the third day of the waxing moon in the month of Vaishaka. Its auspiciousness arises from the belief that one year in the life of humans is equivalent to a day in the lives of celestial beings. So, the month Vaishaka is considered the morning of a celestial being’s day. This, combined with the waxing of the moon is a symbol of the rising energies that will last through the year.

According to the scriptures, the celestial specialty of Akshaya Tritiya makes it a particularly good day for four kinds of activities. They are Yajanam (performance of auspicious activities like yagnas and homams), Yaajanam (enabling the performance of auspicious activities by others), Dhaanam (charity) and Pratigraham (acquisition and accumulation of wealth of any sort).

“Any of these four acts performed on Akshaya Tritiya will have sahasragunabalam, or 1,000 times the normal effect. In olden times, merchant communities accumulated wealth, moderately well off communities performed austerities and farmers planted their crops,” says Dr T P Radhakrishnan Namboothiri, associate professor of Jyotisha at the Madras Sanskrit College.

Till about 15 years ago, Akshaya Tritiya was observed more through yajanam, yaajanam and dhaanam. But rising economic fortunes of the past two decades have seen a definitive reduction in importance to these three activities, and a single-track focus on the pratigraham.

Namboothiri says a coming together of motives and means are behind this metamorphosis. “The practice of buying gold has come from the North in recent years. It is not the practice of the Southern parts of India. Jewellers and other businessmen have a root in the scriptures for the propaganda that they are undertaking,” Namboothiri says. “Either way, it goes well with our ethos of saving, and more specifically, the saving mentality of the Indian woman,” he adds.

Not just this, the day of Akshaya Tritiya is also considered the birthday of the Balarama avatar of Vishnu, and is celebrated as an agrarian festival in large parts of the country.

Namboothiri also says the auspiciousness of this period is not solely a Hindu perspective.

The period is also observed through austerity and charity by Islam, given the fact that both the Hindu and the Islamic systems are based on lunar calendars, he says.