Adhika Masa: The Extra Month in the Hindu Calendar, Explained

Every few years the Hindu calendar has a month that repeats a name. A family hears that this year there are two Jyeshtha months, or two Shravana months, and asks which one holds the festivals. The extra month is called Adhika masa, from adhika, meaning more or additional. It is also called Mala masa, a name that reflects an older view of it as a month outside the normal count, and Purushottama masa, the month of Vishnu in his form as the Supreme Person. This page explains why it exists, how it is picked and what families do in it.

Why the calendar needs an extra month

A lunar month, from one new moon to the next, is about 29.5 days. Twelve such months come to about 354 days. The solar year, the time the Earth takes to return to the same place on its orbit, is about 365 days. So a purely lunar calendar slips against the seasons by about eleven days a year, and after about three years it is a month out. The Islamic calendar accepts this slip and lets its months travel through the seasons. The Hindu calendar does not, because its festivals are tied to the ritus, the six seasons, and to the Sun’s position. Holi has to be a spring festival and Diwali an autumn one.

The cure is to insert a thirteenth month when the gap has grown to about a month. Over a cycle of nineteen years, 235 lunar months fit almost exactly into nineteen solar years, and so seven extra months are added in each such cycle. On average one comes about every thirty-two to thirty-three months.

How the extra month is chosen

The rule is a traditional one, and it relies on the Sun’s movement through the sidereal zodiac. Each month of the solar year begins when the Sun enters a sign, an event called a sankranti. A lunar month usually contains exactly one sankranti. When a lunar month, from new moon to new moon, contains none, the Sun has not changed sign during it, and that month is treated as the extra one. It is named after the month that follows it, with the word Adhika in front, and the ordinary month that follows is called Nija, meaning proper or own.

There is a rarer case. Very occasionally a lunar month contains two sankrantis, in the cooler months when the Sun moves faster. That month is dropped, and it is called a Kshaya masa. The event is very rare, with many decades between occurrences, and when it happens the year also has two Adhika months, one before and one after. Panchang makers compute these from the new moon instants and the Sun’s longitude, and the result is the same in every careful panchang.

The 2026 case: Adhika Jyeshtha

The calendar for 2026 shows how this looks in practice. The computed amanta months around the extra month are these.

During the month that began on 17 May 2026 the Sun did not change sign, so the month was treated as extra. It carries the name of the month that follows, Jyeshtha, and the ordinary Jyeshtha began on 15 June 2026. Compare the computed months of 2027, which run from Chaitra to Phalguna with no repeated name. The same pattern appears in the Chaitra pages: Chaitra began on 19 March 2026 and then on 07 April 2027, 19 days later in the civil calendar, because 2026 had thirteen lunar months.

What is kept and what is avoided in Adhika masa

Tradition treats the extra month as a time for devotion and not for fresh beginnings. Families keep, and often increase, the following practices.

• Worship of Vishnu, whose name Purushottama the month carries, with daily reading of the Bhagavata, the Vishnu Sahasranama or other texts.
• Fasting and simple eating, at whatever level suits the person.
• Charity, with gifts of food, lamps, sweets and clothing. In some traditions thirty-three sweet cakes are given, a number linked to the thirty-three principal deities of the tradition.
• Pilgrimage and bathing in rivers.

Families avoid, in the traditional view, starting weddings, upanayana, mundan, griha pravesh and other new samskaras and large new undertakings. Ongoing rituals, such as a monthly shraddha or a vow already in progress, continue. Regional practice differs, so a family asks its priest, and these are traditions and not rules that apply to everyone. The reasoning behind the muhurat rules is explained in the muhurat section.

The legend of the month, as it is told in many families, says that the extra month was left without a presiding deity and was shunned, and that Vishnu took it as his own and named it after himself, the Purushottama. It is a story told to explain why a month that is outside the regular count is still a good one for prayer.

Which festivals belong to the Adhika month

The named festivals of a month, such as Ganga Dussehra and Nirjala Ekadashi in Jyeshtha, are kept in the ordinary Nija month and not in the Adhika one. The Adhika month has its own Ekadashis, Padmini in the bright half and Parama in the dark half. A festival that is fixed by the Sun, such as Makar Sankranti, is not affected, because the Sun does not wait for the Moon.

To find the festival days for any year, use the festival pages, which already apply these rules for 49 cities. Read the hub of the Hindu calendar for the larger picture, or amanta and purnimanta for how two systems of month names meet.

Frequently asked questions