Patna, Oct 22 (IANS) The four-day popular Chhath festival began here Thursday amid tight security. Millions of Hindu devotees offered prayers to the sun god across the state.
Chhath is celebrated six days after Diwali. It is associated with faith, purity and devotion to the sun god.

Hundreds of devotees, mainly married women, thronged the river banks early morning to bathe before preparing vegetarian food. Many sang traditional songs dedicated to the sun god.

“We first had a bath to clean ourselves before preparing food, known popularly as ‘Nahai-Khai’ that marks the beginning of the Chhath festival,” Manisha Singh, a housewife dressed in a new cotton sari, said here.

She is a ‘varti’ one who performs prayers with old-age rituals and strict discipline and enjoys a high-level of respect from her family and others.

Another woman, Purnima Sinha, said the “ritual of Nahai-Khai is a symbol of purity and strict discipline.

On Saturday the main offerings, Argya, will be given to the sun god on the river banks, Sinha said.

During the festival, married women observe a fast for 36 hours and devotees traditionally offer wheat, milk, sugar cane, bananas and coconuts to the sun.

Colourful idols of the sun god riding his chariot with seven horses, a new attraction this year, were sold on the river banks.

The administration along with dozens of voluntary organisations is working round-the-clock to clean the residential localities and roads leading to the river banks.

“All district magistrates have been directed to accord top priority to the safety of devotees by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar,” an official said.

In Patna, devotees will be provided with full security cover. Seventeen boats of the NDRF (national disaster response force) have been equipped with life saving devices and will constantly patrol the riverfront.

“The NDRF team has been deployed in Patna in view of unsafe and dangerous rising water levels of the Ganges,” Jitendra Kumar Sinha, Patna district magistrate, said.