Kāmadā Ekadasi

The gandharva who lost rhythm and became a monster

Retold from the Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 47. The standard English translation, on which this retelling relies, is by N.A. Deshpande (Motilal Banarsidass).

Kṛṣṇa tells Yudhiṣṭhira a story Vasiṣṭha once told to King Dilīpa. It is about another moment of musical inattention with consequences.

In the city of Nāgapura — adorned, the text says, with gold and jewels — lived powerful nāgas under the rule of King Puṇḍarīka. The court was full of gandharvas, kinnaras, and celestial nymphs. Among the court musicians were a husband and wife who carried the same name. He was the gandharva Lalita. She was the celestial nymph Lalitā. They were inseparable in the way the Purāṇa describes its tightest bonds: in the heart of Lalitā her husband always resided; in his heart, that beautiful Lalitā always resided.

One day, the king was holding court. He was relaxed, expecting entertainment. Lalita came to sing — but Lalitā was not with him.

He sang. He was a professional. But while singing, his mind drifted to his wife, and his tongue stumbled over the words. The arrangement of syllables faltered for a moment.

A naga named Karkoṭaka noticed.

Karkoṭaka, sharp-eyed and well-trained in court politics, immediately reported the error to the king. His tongue stumbled on the words because of his wife.

Puṇḍarīka, the king of the nāgas, with eyes red from anger, cursed Lalita: O you of a wicked mind, be a demon that eats raw flesh and that eats human beings, since, being influenced by love for your wife, you are singing before me.

The transformation was instantaneous. Lalita became a rākṣasa. The Purāṇa describes the body that opened up around him in the kind of careful detail it reserves for spectacles of horror:

His face was fierce. His eyes were deformed. He caused fear even when just seen. His arms were as long as a yojana. His mouth resembled a cave. His eyes were like the moon and the sun. His neck was like a mountain. His nostrils were hollows. His lips were a yojana in length. His body rose up to eight yojanas.

He was no longer himself. He was a building.

Lalitā saw what her husband had become. She did not abandon him. What do I do? Where do I go? My husband is troubled by the curse. Recalling these things to her mind, the Purāṇa says, she did not obtain pleasure in her mind. She followed him into a dense forest, where he wandered in his new form, ate humans, and did not sleep day or night. She wept and wandered with him.

One day, somewhere in the impassable forest, she saw what she had not expected to find — a lovely hermitage, and a sage of tranquil form. She rushed to him, prostrated, and stood waiting.

The sage, devoted to kindness, asked her: Who are you? Why have you come here? Tell the truth to me.

She told him everything. I am the daughter of the gandharva Vīradhanvan. My name is Lalitā. My husband became a demon of fierce form due to a sin. Seeing him, I am not happy. Tell me what to do. Tell me the religious merit by which he may be freed from this state.

The sage answered without ceremony.

O beautiful woman, it is now the bright half of the month of Caitra. The Kāmadā Ekādaśī falls in it, and it destroys sins. Duly observe its vow as I tell you. Give the religious merit you obtain to your husband. When the merit is given, his sin will go away in a moment.

Lalitā observed it. She fasted on the Ekādaśī and again on the Dvādaśī. In the company of a brāhmaṇa, before Viṣṇu, she said the words for the transfer of merit: I have observed the vow, the Kāmadā fast. Let his goblin-hood go by the prowess of this religious merit.

The moment she finished speaking, the demon's body around her husband collapsed. His sins fell away. His divine form returned. He stood again as the gandharva she had loved.

The chapter, in the small, very satisfying note it permits itself at the close, says that the couple then got into an excellent aeroplane — a vimāna — and rose into the sky, looking more charming than before, by the efficacy of the Kāmadā vow.

The vow

Kāmadā Ekādaśī falls on the eleventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Caitra — the lunar new year for many reckonings of the Vikram calendar. The fast is observed on the Ekādaśī, and broken on Dvādaśī.

What distinguishes this Ekādaśī's narrative is the transferability of its merit. The fast is observed by one person — Lalitā — and its fruit is dedicated to another — her husband. As with Mokṣadā, the merit of the vow can be assigned. This Ekādaśī is particularly observed by wives, husbands, and children seeking to remove a curse, condition, or affliction from a loved one whose form or fortune has changed.

The name Kāmadā means fulfiller of desires — and in this story, the desire fulfilled is not a wish for wealth or status but the deepest of a wife's wishes: that the person she loves be returned to her in their true form.

The phalaśruti

Nothing is superior to it, Kṛṣṇa tells Yudhiṣṭhira, in the three worlds with the mobile and the immobile. The vow destroys sins comparable to the condition of a goblin. Reciting or hearing the account brings the fruit of the Vājapeya sacrifice.

The deeper teaching is one that has nothing to do with the vow's name. The story is about what wives know. Puṇḍarīka, the cursing king, saw a single mistake in a song. Lalitā saw a whole man inside the eight-yojana body of a flesh-eating demon. The vow honours the second kind of seeing. It restores what only the loving eye knew was still there.

Source: Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 47, "Kāmadā 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.