देवशयनी एकादशी व्रत कथा

In the Bhavishyottara Purana and the Padma Purana's Uttara Khanda, chapter 53, King Yudhishthira asks Lord Sri Krishna:

Lord Sri Krishna replied:

Lord Krishna then narrated the history of a righteous ancestor of Sri Rama's lineage, King Mandhata, who ruled his empire with such evident fairness that his subjects regarded him as a father. Despite his virtue, a catastrophic drought fell upon his kingdom and lasted three consecutive years: no rain reached the earth, crops failed, rivers and lakes dried to dust, and the people cried out in hunger and thirst.

Seeing his subjects suffer a calamity his own righteous rule could not explain, King Mandhata set out alone into the forest to seek spiritual counsel. His search brought him to the hermitage of Maharishi Angira, son of Lord Brahma. The king bowed before the sage and described, in full, the misery that had settled over his kingdom, asking what penance might lift it.

Sage Angira answered that the age in which Mandhata ruled, the Satya Yuga, demanded a remedy of equal purity, and instructed him:

The katha does not explain the drought as a punishment for any particular fault of Mandhata's own, and this detail matters to how the story is remembered. A kingdom's prosperity in these Puranic accounts depends on more than the ruler's personal virtue alone; it depends on the collective devotion the ruler and his subjects direct toward the divine. Mandhata's search for a remedy, rather than for someone to blame, reflects this understanding: he looked for a shared spiritual practice that could restore the balance between his kingdom and the rains it depended upon, not for a crime to punish.

Mandhata returned to his kingdom and, together with his royal family and all his subjects, observed Devshayani Ekadashi exactly as the sage had instructed. By the grace this united fast earned, dark monsoon clouds gathered across the sky within days and released torrents of rain. The drought ended, the fields turned green again, and peace returned to the kingdom.

Beyond this katha, Devshayani Ekadashi marks the formal start of Chaturmas, the four sacred monsoon months spanning Shravana, Bhadrapada, Ashvina, and Kartika, during which Lord Vishnu is held to rest in Yoga Nidra. Across these months, auspicious domestic rites such as weddings and housewarmings are traditionally set aside, and householders redirect that energy toward scriptural study and sadhana. Many devotees additionally take a Chaturmas vow of eating only once a day, Eka-Bhukta, or of abstaining from particular vegetables or grains for the duration.

Devshayani Ekadashi is also known as Harishayani, since Hari, Vishnu, begins his Yoga Nidra on this day, and as Padma Ekadashi, a name tied to the Padma Purana's own account of the observance. Some traditions additionally call it Ashadhi Ekadashi, after the month in which it falls, and in Maharashtra it marks the climax of the annual Pandharpur Wari, when thousands of Varkari pilgrims walk to the temple of Vitthala to be present for this exact tithi. The multiplicity of names reflects how widely the day is kept across different regional traditions, even while the core observance, the fast dedicated to Vishnu's rest, remains the same everywhere.

Devotees begin the observance with sankalpa, the formal vow taken before sunrise that names the devotee's intention and dedicates the coming fast to Lord Vishnu's rest. The fast itself typically excludes grain for the full day, with many keeping a stricter water-only or fruit-only discipline through the night's vigil. Puja is offered at the customary morning hour, bathing the deity's image with Panchamrita and water drawn fresh for the occasion, followed by an evening prayer inviting Lord Vishnu into his rest with the verse Susamaye Jagannatha Lokanatha Janardana, Idam Vratam Mayarakshyam Shaye Tvam Kshirodadhanvitah (a Sanskrit invocation asking Janardana, Lord of the universe, to accept this vow as he rests upon the ocean of milk), offered alongside yellow garments, yellow marigold flowers, and Tulsi leaves.

The fast is broken, parana, on Dvadashi morning, after sunrise and after the completion of that day's prayers, when devotees feed cows and offer food to guests before taking their own first meal. The katha's teaching holds that Devshayani Ekadashi's merit reaches beyond a single household's devotion: a kingdom's collective, sincere fast was enough to break a three-year drought that the king's own righteous rule alone could not end, and the same fast observed each year is held to renew the balance between devotion and the rains the land depends upon.