Ekadashi and Vrat Days

Where Ekadashi Falls

Ekadashi — agiyaras (અગિયારસ) in Gujarati — is simply the eleventh tithi of a fortnight. Since every lunar month has two fortnights, ekadashi occurs twice a month: once in sud and once in vad.

That gives 24 ekadashis in a normal year, and 26 in a year containing an adhik maas, since the extra month brings its own pair. Each has a name — Shattila, Kamada, Nirjala, Devshayani, Prabodhini and so on — and several carry particular significance:

• Devshayani ekadashi (Asadh sud agiyaras) traditionally begins chaturmas, the four-month period in which weddings and other auspicious ceremonies are avoided.
• Prabodhini or Devuthi ekadashi (Kartak sud agiyaras) ends it, which is why the wedding season opens shortly after Diwali.
• Nirjala ekadashi (Jeth sud agiyaras) is the strictest, kept without even water, and is held to carry the merit of all the others.

Because the tithi is the same every year, finding ekadashi needs no calculation — you just need a calendar that marks the tithi. Finding the Gregorian date does need one, because tithis move against the English calendar. That is what the app is for.

What the Vrat Involves

Practice varies widely by family, community and sampradaya, and the range below is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Broadly:

• Nirahar — a complete fast, with or without water. The strictest form.
• Phalahar — fruit, milk and permitted foods only. The most commonly kept form.
• Ek tana — a single meal in the day, taken without grains.

The consistent thread across nearly all forms is the avoidance of grains and pulses — rice, wheat, dal and their derivatives. Foods such as sabudana, singoda flour, rajgira, potato, fruit and dairy are what typically fill the gap, and much of the Gujarati farali repertoire exists precisely for these days.

Parana: Breaking the Fast

This is the part people most often get wrong, and it is the reason ekadashi timing appears complicated when the date itself is simple.

The fast is broken not whenever you like on the following day, but during a defined window on dwadashi — baras, the twelfth tithi. The window opens after sunrise and must close before dwadashi itself ends. Because tithis end at clock times rather than at midnight, that deadline can fall early in the morning.

So a panchang will print something like parana: 06:58 to 09:14. If dwadashi ends at 09:14, waiting until lunch means the fast was not broken within the prescribed period. This is exactly why the end time of a tithi is worth reading and not just its name — see what is a tithi.

The Other Regular Vrat Days

Ekadashi is the most frequent but far from the only recurring observance marked on a Gujarati calendar:

Weekday vrats sit alongside these — Monday for Shiva, Tuesday for Hanuman, Thursday for Guru, Saturday for Shani — and are chosen by the individual rather than dictated by the tithi.

Shraddh and the Pitru Paksha

One more date-sensitive observance worth knowing. Shraddh rites for ancestors are performed on the tithi of the person's death, and the fortnight of Bhadarvo vad — pitru paksha — is set aside for them collectively. This is why people check the tithi of a death rather than the Gregorian anniversary: the observance follows the lunar date, so it moves against the English calendar every year.

If you need to work out the tithi corresponding to a past date, the app's month view lets you scroll back through previous years and read the tithi off directly.

Frequently Asked Questions