Aṣṭāhnika
Three times a year the gods of all four classes travel to Nandīśvara and keep an eight-day festival at the fifty-two temples. Jains on earth keep the same eight days.
The days run from the eighth of the bright fortnight to the full moon — aṣṭamī to pūrṇimā — in Kārtika, Phālguna and Āṣāḍha. Bhavanavāsī, Vyantara, Jyotiṣka and Vaimānika gods all come, with their retinues.
There is something strange in that, and it is worth saying plainly. Nandīśvara has no year. Past Mānuṣottara the suns and moons do not move, so nothing out there marks a day or a month or a season. The festival calendar the gods keep is borrowed entirely from the human world — from the one small disc where time still turns, and whose inhabitants can never attend.
On earth the observance continues. The Phālguna and Āṣāḍha ones are called Nandīśvara aṣṭāhnika by name, and the rite is understood as a deliberate copy of one being performed somewhere unreachable. It is the only Jain festival whose subject is a place.
Measurements and counts
| Days | 8 — aṣṭamī to pūrṇimā |
|---|---|
| Months | Kārtika, Phālguna, Āṣāḍha |
| Times a year | 3 |
| Who attends | gods of all four classes |
| Who cannot | everyone else |
| Year on Nandīśvara | there isn't one |