Ekādaśī

When it falls

The eleventh lunar day (ekādaśī) of each fortnight, so twice a lunar month and twenty-four times a year, with a twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth in an intercalary month. The fast opens at sunrise and is broken the next morning inside a window called pāraṇa, which the almanac fixes to the minute.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

The Padma Purāṇa tells of a demon named Mura who hid inside Viṣṇu while he slept, and of a maiden born from the sleeping god's body who killed him. Viṣṇu woke, named her Ekādaśī after the day, and granted that whoever keeps her day is freed from what they have done.

The fast is older than the story. Grain is what the body reaches for first, and setting it aside for a day is the smallest renunciation a householder can make without leaving the house — which is the point of a vrata as against a retreat.

Each of the twenty-four has its own name and its own telling, and the almanac names them: Vaikuṇṭha Ekādaśī in Dhanurmāsa is the largest, Nirjalā in Jyeṣṭha the hardest, and the two that fall in an intercalary month are Padminī and Paramā.

How the day is kept

• Grains and beans are set aside for the day. Fruit, milk, root vegetables and the flours made from them are eaten instead, and some keep it without water at all.
• The day is for japa, the repetition of a name, and for reading the Bhagavad Gītā or the Viṣṇu Sahasranāma.
• The fast is broken the next morning within the pāraṇa window; breaking it before or after is held to undo the keeping of it.
• Vaiṣṇava temples keep the whole day awake, and in Śrīraṅgam and Tirumala the Dhanurmāsa Ekādaśī draws the largest crowds of the year.

More fasts and vigils