Festival
Akṣaya Tṛtīyā
The "imperishable" third day
Dates follow the Māyāpur (India) reckoning, the base of most published Vaiṣṇava calendars. The tradition sets each day by the tithi present at local sunrise, so your own date may fall a day earlier or later — see the calendar for your city.
Akṣaya means "imperishable": the tradition holds that what is begun on this tithi does not run out. Several accounts attach to it — the start of Satya-yuga, the descent of the Ganges, the beginning of Vyāsa's dictation of the Mahābhārata — and in memory it is the day Kṛṣṇa received his boyhood friend Sudāmā, who arrived with nothing and left without asking, and found his poverty quietly gone.
On the chart
Sources
- Purāṇic tradition; Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.80–81 (Sudāmā)Direct scriptural support
A study reference, not a devotional instruction. Observance varies by community and is not detailed here.