Ajā Ekadasi

The emperor who became a chāṇḍāla's slave

Retold from the Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 56. The standard English translation, on which this retelling relies, is by N.A. Deshpande (Motilal Banarsidass).

There was once a king named Hariścandra. He was an emperor, true to his word, lord of the whole earth.

The Purāṇa, in this chapter, does not retell the whole long story of how Hariścandra fell. That story is told elsewhere — how the sage Viśvāmitra tested him, how he gave his kingdom, how every promise made was kept past the point of endurance. The chapter assumes the reader knows. It says only this:

Due to the acquisition of some act, he was deprived of his kingdom.

The phrase is a euphemism for the magnitude of what happened. The man who had ruled all of earth lost it. The chapter continues:

He sold his wife and son and also himself. The righteous king became the slave of a chāṇḍāla.

The fall is total. Hariścandra is not merely poor. He has had to put a price on his own wife, on his own child, and finally on himself. He has been bought by a chāṇḍāla — a man of the lowest, despised caste of traditional society, who handled corpses and burned them. Hariścandra's work, as the chāṇḍāla's slave, was to strip the garments from the dead at the cremation ground and collect the fees for their burning.

The Purāṇa does not soften this. Resorting to truth, he removed the garments of the dead.

He did it for many years. But that best king never swerved from truth.

He kept his word to the chāṇḍāla. He worked the cremation ground. He did not run away. He did not lie about who he had been to escape the work. He did not refuse the lowest task on the grounds of his former rank. The Purāṇa, by reporting this with such directness, is asking the reader to feel the weight of it.

Eventually, the king became distressed.

What should I do? he asked himself. Where should I go? How shall I escape this?

The questions are the same as Dhrishtabuddhi's in Chapter 49 — the same as Lumpaka's in Chapter 40 — the same as every fallen man in the Purāṇas asks. They are the questions that mark the moment when help becomes possible.

A sage came.

The Purāṇa explains why. Brahmā has created brāhmaṇas to oblige others. That is the sentence the text gives for the sage's arrival. The sage was Gautama. He recognized that the slave of a chāṇḍāla, working at a cremation ground, was the man who had once been emperor of the world. He came to him.

Hariścandra, on seeing the sage, bowed. He joined his palms. He stood before Gautama and told his entire account — accompanied by grief, the Purāṇa adds. He did not pretend his condition was acceptable. He did not pretend he was unbroken.

Gautama listened. The Purāṇa says only that the sage was amazed. Then he gave the vow.

O king, the sage said, the very auspicious Ekādaśī falling in the dark half of Bhādrapada — called Ajā, giving great merit — has come. Observe its vow. Your sin will come to an end. Due to your good fortune it will fall on the seventh day from today. Engage in fasting. Keep awake at night. When the vow is thus observed, your sin will certainly perish.

The sage added: Due to the efficacy of your religious merit, I have come here.

That last detail is worth pausing on. It is not luck that brought the sage. It is something Hariścandra himself had accumulated — through the long endurance of his slavery, through his refusal to lie, through his keeping of every promise — that pulled the sage's feet toward the cremation ground. The man who has nothing has, by his fidelity, summoned the messenger he needs.

The sage spoke the instruction. Then he disappeared.

On the seventh day, Hariścandra observed the vow. He fasted on Ajā Ekādaśī. He kept awake the whole night.

What happened next is told in a paragraph the Purāṇa permits itself almost as a hymn.

When the vow was observed, the king's sin perished in a moment. Drums sounded in the sky. A shower of flowers fell from the sky. By the efficacy of the Ekādaśī he got the kingdom free from any nuisance. He was united with his wife and lived with his son. Along with the residents of his city and his paraphernalia, Hariścandra obtained heaven.

It was the largest restoration in any of the Ekādaśī chapters. Not just an individual recovered. A whole kingdom — the city, the entourage, the staff, the household — went with him to heaven.

The vow

Ajā Ekādaśī falls on the eleventh tithi of the dark fortnight of Bhādrapada. The fast is broken on Dvādaśī.

The name Ajā means the unborn — one of the names of Viṣṇu, since the lord is beyond birth. It is also, more pointedly, the name for one who is beyond the cycle of births altogether. The Ekādaśī takes its name from the freedom it offers — freedom from being reborn into the position one fell from.

This Ekādaśī is observed by those whose loss has been disproportionate to anything they can identify as their fault. The Purāṇa, by attaching this vow to Hariścandra's story, is saying: even what looks irreparable can be reversed in a moment. Even slavery at a cremation ground. Even being separated from wife and child. Even having to put a price on yourself.

The phalaśruti

Those men who observe the vow of this kind get free from all sins and go to heaven.

Reciting or listening to the account gives the fruit of a horse-sacrifice.

The teaching at the heart of this Ekādaśī is in the sage's small disclosure: Due to the efficacy of your religious merit, I have come here. The lord does not abandon the truth-teller. Hariścandra had spent years stripping garments from corpses, and in all those years he had not lied to escape one minute of it. The sage, walking across the world, was pulled toward that fidelity as if by gravity. The vow then completed in a single day what the years of endurance had earned the right to receive.

The Purāṇa is saying: keep the truth, even in the worst place. Someone is being drawn toward you. The vow is the door they will arrive through.

Source: Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 56, "Ajā Ekādaśī." Translated by N.A. Deshpande in Ancient Indian Tradition and Mythology series, vols. 39–48 (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, ISBN 9788120838291). The full English translation is freely available at wisdomlib.org.