| The word hemante refers to the month of Mārgaśīrṣa — from approximately the middle of November to the middle of December, according to the Western calendar. In Chapter Twenty-two of Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrīla Prabhupāda comments that the gopīs “first ate haviṣyānna, a kind of food prepared by boiling together mung dāl and rice without any spices or turmeric. According to Vedic injunction, this kind of food is recommended to purify the body before one enacts a ritualistic ceremony.”
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