Sharad Navratri 2026 begins with Ghatasthapana on Sunday, 11 October and ends with Vijayadashami — Dussehra — on Tuesday, 20 October. Durga Ashtami falls on the 18th and Maha Navami on the 19th. In Maharashtra those nine evenings have their own aarti, and it is not the one most of India sings.
The north Indian Navratri aarti is Jai Ambe Gauri — twelve verses of portrait and victory. The Marathi one is Durge Durghat Bhari, three verses long, and it describes the goddess not at all. This is a guide to the Maharashtrian Navratri evening: the sequence, the text, and why it is built the way it is.
The evening sequence in a Marathi home
A household that keeps a ghat — the pot installed on the first day and worshipped through the nine nights — sings an aarti morning and evening. The evening one runs in the same order as every other Marathi puja:
- A Ganesh aarti first, because Ganesha is invoked before anything. Usually Sukhkarta Dukhharta.
- The Devi aarti: Durge Durghat Bhari.
- Ghalin Lotangan to close — the shlokas of surrender and the mahamantra.
Families who keep both traditions, which is common in Mumbai and Pune, sing Jai Ambe Gauri after Durge Durghat Bhari rather than instead of it. Nobody minds a long aarti during Navratri.
What the Marathi aarti actually says
Jai Ambe Gauri is a picture: vermilion in the parting of her hair, the lion, the pearl at the tip of her nose, the demons named one by one. Durge Durghat Bhari has none of that. Its first word, durghat, means an impassable place, and the first verse is a plain admission — without you the world is too hard to cross, I have lost, take the trouble away.
The second verse is the one Marathi devotional literature is proud of. The four Vedas laboured and could say nothing about her. The six schools of philosophy argued among themselves and were swept off in the current. And she — lavlahi, quickly — comes to anyone who simply asks. It is the bhakti position in eight words: scripture and reasoning fail where plain devotion is answered at once.
The third verse ends with the poet's signature, Narahari, and the smallest request in the whole text: to be lost in a single particle — lesha — of the dust of her feet.
The full text is on its own page, with each line's romanisation and the meaning of every verse, checked against two printed Marathi collections.
Who Narahari was
Tradition identifies the signature with Sant Narahari Sonar, the goldsmith-saint of Pandharpur in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and a contemporary of Namdev. The story told about him is that he was a devoted Shaiva who refused to enter the Vitthal temple until, sent to measure the deity's waist for a gold belt with his eyes closed, he found his hands on a Shiva linga — and opened his eyes to Vitthal. Whether or not he wrote this aarti, it has been sung in Maharashtra for centuries and belongs to everyone.
The refrain, and the story it names
Jai devi jai devi jai Mahishasurmardini — victory to the slayer of Mahishasura. That is the story the nine nights exist to retell: the buffalo demon no god could kill, and the goddess who could, on the tenth day. The Marathi refrain adds tarak sanjivani — the saviour who restores life — which is the goddess of the Mahalakshmi temple at Kolhapur and the Bhavani of Tuljapur, the two great Devi shrines of the state.
The ninth and tenth days
On Durga Ashtami, 18 October, many Maharashtrian homes do a havan or a Kumari puja in the morning and sing the full sequence with extra force in the evening. Maha Navami, the 19th, is the last night of the ghat. On Vijayadashami, the 20th, the ghat is lifted; the aarti is sung a final time before that, and then families exchange apta leaves — "gold" — and the season is over.
Two more texts for the same nine nights
If your household sings to Lakshmi during the middle three days, Om Jai Lakshmi Mata is the standard text; Diwali follows on 8 November and the same aarti returns then. And for the closing verses of any Maharashtrian aarti, whatever the deity, Ghalin Lotangan is the one text that always fits.
All the aarti pages on this site carry the complete Devanagari, a singable romanisation, the English meaning, and the printed source each text was checked against.
