Chopda Pujan 2026 falls on Sunday 8 November, the same evening as Diwali and Mahavira’s nirvana. Jain trading families close the old year’s account book and bless the new one that evening, inside the choghadiya windows Drik Panchang publishes for each city, and open the first page with the Navkar Mantra and a short set of invocation lines. This page gives the 2026 muhurat, the practice, and states plainly which of those lines this site could actually verify.
What Chopda Pujan Is
Chopda is the account book, also called the bahi or bahi-khata; pujan is the blessing. On the evening the Vikram Samvat trading year turns over, business families across Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra close the old ledger and open a fresh one, so the book carries a blessing from its first entry. It is not a Jain-only observance. Jain and Hindu trading families in the same cities, often the same markets, keep it on the same evening, which is why the vidhi below draws a line between what is shared mercantile custom and what a Jain household specifically adds to it.
The date itself needs no separate proof here: Diwali 2026 falls on Kartika Amavasya, Sunday 8 November, and the Jain new year begins the following morning. This page is about Chopda Pujan specifically, not the nirvana night itself, which that page already covers in full.
The 2026 Muhurat
Drik Panchang publishes choghadiya windows for Chopda Pujan by city. For Ahmedabad, its 2026 page gives:
| Window | Choghadiya | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Morning | Chara, Labha, Amrita | 11:27 AM to 12:23 PM |
| Afternoon | Shubha | 1:47 PM to 3:11 PM |
| Evening | Shubha, Amrita, Chara | 5:58 PM to 10:47 PM |
| Night | Labha | 2:00 AM to 3:36 AM, 9 November |
| Early morning | Shubha | 5:13 AM to 6:49 AM, 9 November |
Most families keep the ritual in the evening block, after dark and alongside the household’s Diwali lamps. Drik Panchang spells these choghadiya Amrita, Shubha, Labha and Chara; this site’s own muhurta tool uses the equivalent Amrit, Shubh and Labh for the same three favoured windows, with Char treated as neutral rather than actively sought for a purchase or an opening.
These times are computed from Ahmedabad’s own sunrise and sunset, so they will not be Mumbai’s or Delhi’s, let alone London’s or New Jersey’s. Choghadiya divides local daylight into eight parts, and the parts change length with the city and the season. Use the Jain Panchang for your own city rather than importing Ahmedabad’s clock.
The Vidhi
Practice varies by family and by region, but a common shape runs through most of it.
The shop or home office is cleaned before the evening begins, in the same spirit as the general Diwali cleaning the whole household does. The old chopda is closed with a final entry and set aside; the new one is opened. Many families mark the first page with a swastik, the auspicious mark found across Indian religious practice, and the words Shubh Labh, meaning auspicious profit, sometimes alongside Riddhi Siddhi, prosperity and accomplishment. Those two words descend from the wider Hindu trading-community version of this custom, where Riddhi and Siddhi are paired with Ganesha in Puranic tradition, with the exact relationship given differently in different Puranas; a Jain household that writes them is following shared regional habit, not Jain doctrine, and this site says so rather than presenting them as Jain in origin.
What a Jain household adds that is its own: the Navkar Mantra, recited before the book is opened, since it is the one recitation every Jain sect shares and asks nothing of any deity in return; and a remembrance of Gautam Swami, Mahavira’s chief disciple, whose attainment of omniscience on the new year’s dawn is why the new year itself opens with him rather than with Mahavira. A lamp is part of the evening too, but it is the ordinary Diwali lamp this site has already explained at length, not a fire ritual: nothing in Chopda Pujan involves a homa, a havan, or a priest offering into a fire.
What Is Actually Written on the First Page
This is the part that gets repeated online with the least care, so here is what this site could confirm this session, and what it could not.
A short invocation, quoted by Jain Media as a traditional phrase, names three figures together in one line: Gautam Swami’s labdhi, Shalibhadra’s riddhi, and Kayvanna Seth’s saubhagya.
- Labdhi is spiritual attainment or power. Gautam Swami is remembered for an aksheen-mahanasi labdhi, a bowl of kheer that fed fifteen hundred ascetics without ever running out; Jain devotional writing separately calls him a treasury of attainment in his own right, which is the same idea this line invokes.
- Riddhi is wealth or prosperity in the material sense. Shalibhadra was a Rajgriha merchant’s son whose fortune became proverbial in Jain telling, “rich like Shalibhadra,” before he gave all of it up to become a monk.
- Saubhagya is good fortune in the sense of a run of it, not a single windfall. Kayvanna Seth, also called Krutpunya, was a Rajgriha merchant whose fortune collapsed and was rebuilt within one lifetime; a Gujarati work is titled simply Kayvanna Shethnu Saubhagya, Kayvanna Seth’s good fortune, which independently confirms the same pairing.
A fourth line is documented separately and just as clearly: two independent Jain sources record that it became customary to write may we be blessed with the intellect of Abhaykumar in the account books worshipped at Diwali. Abhaykumar was chief minister to King Shrenika, also called Bimbisara, and the standing example in Jain narrative literature of a problem solved by wit rather than force. Both sources give the sentence in almost identical words, which is as close to a documented custom as this kind of devotional material gets.
What this site is not printing. Longer versions of this invocation circulate, and some add a fifth figure for a fifth quality, Kesariyaji’s bhandar among them, the treasury of the Rishabhdev temple in Rajasthan known as Kesariyaji. This site looked for a source tying that name to the chopda invocation specifically and did not find one worth standing behind. Rather than print a plausible-sounding line on the strength of repetition alone, it is left out. If you know the line and where it comes from, tell us.
What this is, and is not. These are stated aspirations, naming figures the tradition already holds up for a particular quality, written at the start of a working year. They are not a mechanism. This site’s position on muhurta applies here without adjustment: a nimitta indicates, it does not cause, and the doctrine of panch samavaya holds self-effort to be the decisive factor among the five that produce any outcome, this line included. No ledger balances because of what was written on its first page in November.
Custom, Not Doctrine
Chopda Pujan sits where this site’s muhurta page already puts it: a day kept auspicious by long trading-community custom, not by scripture. Nothing here is canon, and nothing here is required of a Jain householder.
Three things follow, and this site holds all three without exception. No gemstone is recommended to strengthen the year ahead, here or anywhere else on this site. No fire ritual beyond the ordinary Diwali lamp is performed or suggested, because a homa or a paid puja package assumes karma can be appeased, which Jain doctrine denies outright. And no claim is made either way, that keeping the custom helps the year or that skipping it hurts it. A family that opens its books without any of this has done nothing wrong.
Where the traditions differ. Chopda Pujan is kept overwhelmingly by Shvetambara trading families of Gujarati and Marwari background, alongside their Hindu neighbours in the same markets. Digambara households in this same window are more often oriented toward the Kartika Ashtahnika Parva, the days of celestial worship that close the month, rather than toward an account-book custom. Neither is more Jain than the other; the account-book custom is regional and mercantile before it is sectarian.
Chopda Pujan Is Not Labh Pancham
The two get merged constantly, and they are five days apart. Chopda Pujan blesses the book on Diwali evening itself. Labh Pancham, Kartika Shukla 5, which many Jain families keep as Gyan Panchami on Saturday 14 November 2026, is when a good number of businesses make their first actual transaction, or their first entry of real trade, in the book that was only blessed on Diwali. One blesses the book; the other opens it for business. Treat them as two separate dates rather than two names for the same evening.
When a Personal Muhurat Matters More Than the Calendar
Chopda Pujan is a fixed community date for a book that is continuing. Opening an actual new shop, a new firm or a new venture is a different question, because that beginning has its own conditions: a lease date, a registration, premises that are or are not ready, partners on different schedules. Forcing a new venture’s opening onto Diwali evening, only because the account-book custom happens to fall then, treats a community date as if it were a personal one.
The classical approach treats a new undertaking on its own terms, its own tithi, nakshatra and lagna, checked against what is actually being started, rather than borrowed from the nearest festival. Where the stakes are a shop, a partnership or a firm rather than a single evening’s symbolism, a consultation looks at the specific venture, which is the more useful reading for a beginning that will not repeat next Diwali.
Frequently asked questions
↳ When is Chopda Pujan 2026?
Sunday 8 November 2026, the evening of Diwali. Drik Panchang's choghadiya windows for Ahmedabad run in blocks across the day, with the main evening window from 5:58 PM to 10:47 PM, when most families keep the ritual alongside the household's Diwali lamps. Times shift by city because choghadiya is computed from local sunrise and sunset, so use the site's own Panchang for your own city rather than Ahmedabad's times directly.
↳ What is written on the first page of the new chopda?
This site could confirm one traditional line naming Gautam Swami's labdhi, Shalibhadra's riddhi and Kayvanna Seth's saubhagya, and a separately documented custom of writing that the year bring the intellect of Abhaykumar. Longer versions in circulation add further names, Kesariyaji's bhandar among them, which this site checked and could not verify to a source it trusts, so it is left out rather than printed on the strength of repetition alone.
↳ Is Chopda Pujan a Jain custom or a Hindu one?
Both, in the sense that Jain and Hindu trading families across Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra keep the same evening and the same account-book custom side by side. What is specifically Jain is what is added to it: the Navkar Mantra, the remembrance of Gautam Swami, and Jain figures named in the invocation lines, rather than a petition to Ganesha or Lakshmi, which this site would never present in its own voice.
↳ What is the difference between Chopda Pujan and Labh Pancham?
Chopda Pujan blesses the new account book on Diwali evening itself, Sunday 8 November 2026. Labh Pancham, which many Jain families keep as Gyan Panchami on Saturday 14 November 2026, is the day a business actually reopens and makes its first entry of real trade in that book, after keeping the shop closed through the first days of the new year. They are five days apart and serve two different purposes.
↳ Does writing these lines actually bring wealth or good fortune?
No stronger claim is made here than the tradition itself makes. A nimitta indicates; it does not cause, and Jain doctrine holds self-effort to be the decisive factor in any outcome, panch samavaya's fifth and final term. The lines name figures the tradition already associates with a quality, written as a stated aspiration for the year, not as a mechanism, a gemstone, or a substitute for the work the year will actually require.
Sources. Diwali on Sunday 8 November 2026 and the Jain new year on Monday 9 November are this site's own dates, set out on Diwali and Vira Nirvana and independently confirmed on the Chopda Pujan date itself by Drik Panchang's own page, below. Labh Pancham and Gyan Panchami on Saturday 14 November 2026, and the Kartika Ashtahnika Parva, are from Jain festivals 2026. The 2026 Chopda Pujan choghadiya windows for Ahmedabad are from Drik Panchang's Chopda Pujan muhurat page, fetched this session. The three-part invocation naming Gautam Swami's labdhi, Shalibhadra's riddhi and Kayvanna Seth's saubhagya is quoted from Jain Media's account of Kayvanna Seth; the Kayvanna Seth and saubhagya pairing is independently corroborated by the title of Kayvanna Shethnu Saubhagya on Jain Quantum, and Gautam Swami's labdhi is independently corroborated by Labdhinidhan Gautamswami, also on Jain Quantum. The Abhaykumar invocation is quoted in near-identical wording from two independent sources, Jainsite's Abhaykumar story and Tattva Gyan's Mahamantri Abhaykumar. Kesariyaji's bhandar, sometimes named in longer versions of this invocation, could not be traced to a source this site could stand behind and is not printed. Corrections are seva: tell us.