The moon on Sharad Purnima is not the moon of any other night. Astronomers measure it as the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, when the earth's tilt brings the moon to its lowest arc across the sky, keeping it visible longer and washing everything in a flatter, cooler light. In Braj, the stretch of land in Uttar Pradesh that holds Vrindavan, Mathura, Barsana, and Nandgaon, this particular moon is not a meteorological event. It is the night the Raas Leela happened, Krishna's circular dance with the gopis in the forest of Vrindavan, described in the tenth canto of the Bhagavata Purana. Every temple in Braj marks it differently, and two places mark it in ways that do not exist anywhere else.
