Chitragupta Puja

Yama, who receives every being after death, came before Brahma with the weight of what He had been given. The lives were without number, and the deeds within each life beyond counting. No one, He said, could hold such a record alone.

Brahma entered meditation, and remained there long. From that meditation a figure arose bearing a pen and an inkpot, and Brahma gave Him the name Chitragupta - chit, for the consciousness He arose from, and gupta, for what lies hidden within it. To Him was given the record of every being’s deeds, and from that record Yama’s court would judge.

The same account gives the Kayastha community its descent. Brahma declared that the progeny of Chitragupta would be called Kayastha, from kaya, His own body. That is what the text sets down, and we set it down here as the text gives it.

What this day honours is the keeping of the record itself. Everything is written - not only what we would rather went unrecorded, but everything: what no one witnessed, and what no one thanked us for. A record that complete is what makes the reckoning just. Nothing is missed, nothing is counted twice, nothing is quietly forgotten in anyone’s favour. And so once a year the pen, the inkpot and the ledger are set down before the household, and the household sits before them.

Chitragupta reaches us through scripture - He is in the Garuda Purana, in the Mahabharata and in the Padma Purana. The puja on this tithi reaches us another way. We have not found it set down in any text, and it has been kept regardless, year upon year, in the homes that keep it. The figure is written. The day is carried.