Rama Ekadashi

Rama Ekadashi — Katha

The legendary story recited as part of the vrat. Read aloud during the morning puja.

The Rama Ekadashi Vrat Katha is the story of King Muchukunda, a great Vaishnava devotee whose daughter Chandrabhaga had married a prince named Shobhana. Chandrabhaga, raised in her father's strict ekadashi-observing household, had observed every ekadashi with full devotion since childhood.

Shobhana, the prince she married, was however of a different temperament — physically weak and unable to bear long fasts. When the first ekadashi after their marriage approached, Shobhana confessed: "I cannot keep an ekadashi fast — my body is too weak; I will collapse before Dwadashi."

Chandrabhaga answered with her father's training: "In this household no member of the family eats on ekadashi. The discipline is older than either of us. If you cannot observe a full nirjala fast, observe a partial fast — fruits, milk only — but you must observe something."

Shobhana attempted the partial fast on the next ekadashi. By Dwadashi morning he could not eat — his body had reached its limit. Within hours, the prince died of weakness brought on by the fast.

Chandrabhaga was distraught. Her father consoled her: "Daughter, your husband died observing an ekadashi vrat. The merit of dying in observance of an ekadashi is profound; he has not been lost; he has been carried somewhere none of us can yet see."

Some years later, while travelling, Chandrabhaga came to the city of Mandarachal. There — to her astonishment — she met Shobhana, alive, prosperous, ruling the city as a king. He embraced her: "Beloved, the ekadashi vrat I died observing for you carried me here. I was placed in a celestial city; I have been a king of this kingdom for years. But the kingdom is not stable — it exists by the merit of my single ekadashi observance, and that merit is finite. Each year a part of it dissolves."

Chandrabhaga said: "I will give you mine. I have observed every ekadashi of my life with full sincerity. I dedicate the merit of all those observances to you — and I will continue observing through the rest of my life and dedicating each one to your stability here."

She did so. The kingdom became eternal; Shobhana eventually rose from it to Vaikuntha. The katha is preserved in the Brahma Vaivarta Purana as proof that the Rama Ekadashi vrat — observed by Chandrabhaga at the centre of this story — has the power to alter even death and to dissolve even the gravest karmic difficulties.