Mokshadā Ekadasi

The king who freed his fathers from hell

Retold from the Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 39. The standard English translation, on which this retelling relies, is by N.A. Deshpande (Motilal Banarsidass).

In the city of Campaka, in an age before this one, there lived a king named Vaikhānasa. He was the kind of king the old texts remember well: he treated his subjects as his own sons, his kingdom was prosperous, the brāhmaṇas in his court had mastered the Vedas and the Upaniṣads. His people lacked nothing. Nor did he.

Then, one night, he dreamed.

In the dream, he saw his ancestors. Not the ancestors who watch over you from a brighter place — these were ancestors who had fallen. They were in hell. And they were speaking to him.

O you who are born of our bodies, they said, emancipate us from this ocean of hell.

They wept as they said it. They said it again, and again. Vaikhānasa woke from the dream and could not return to the man he had been.

The next morning he summoned the brāhmaṇas of his court and described what he had seen. My ancestors have gone to hell, he told them. They wept and asked me to free them. My kingdom does not please me. My horses and elephants do not please me. My wife and sons do not please me. What good is a son living in wealth and power when his father lives in a fearful hell?

The brāhmaṇas listened. Then they told him: Not far from here lives a sage called Parvata. He knows the past and the future. Go to him.

The king went. He travelled with his retinue — brāhmaṇas, other kings — and came to the hermitage of Parvata, which was vast and held many sages versed in the three Vedas. Vaikhānasa fell at the sage's feet in the daṇḍavat — full prostration, the body laid like a staff. The sage, after a courteous question about the seven limbs of the king's kingdom and whether all was well within it, listened to what Vaikhānasa had really come to say.

The king described the dream again.

Parvata closed his eyes. He sat in meditation for a short time. When he opened them, he spoke carefully, because the truth was not gentle.

I have understood the former acts of your ancestors, the sage said. In his previous existence, your father was a kṣatriya, proud of his kingdom. He was prompted by his royal duty and sought to gain his object. He went away to a village — and he left his wife behind during the period favourable for conception. He did not give her what should be given to his wife at that time.

The sin was specific. Not negligence in some general sense, not failure to give alms, not violence in war. The king's father, in his previous birth, had chosen kingdom over wife at the moment when only the wife mattered. He had abandoned her in the time of her fertility. For this — for putting power above the line of life itself — he had fallen, and his ancestors had fallen with him.

By the power of which vow, Vaikhānasa asked, can they be saved?

Parvata answered: In the bright half of Mārgashīrṣa there is the Ekādaśī called Mokṣā — Mokṣadā. Observe this vow. Give its religious merit to your father. By the efficacy of that merit, they will be released. This is true, because it is the word of Brahmā.

The king went home. Mārgashīrṣa came, the bright half began, the eleventh day arrived. Vaikhānasa observed the vow — the fast, the worship of Viṣṇu, the keeping-awake through the night, the tulasī offerings — with the precision of a man who knew what was at stake. When the merit was given to his father, the sky answered. A shower of flowers fell from above. His father, with all the ancestors who had fallen with him, ascended out of hell. And from the sky, the father spoke to his son.

May it be well with you, the voice said. May it be well with you.

Then he went to heaven.

This is the vow that gives liberation. It does not only purify the one who observes it — it can be assigned, given, transferred. A son can release a father. A descendant can lift an ancestor out of the hell their own karma made for them. There is, the sage told the king, no Ekādaśī superior to this one for granting salvation.

The vow

Mokṣadā Ekādaśī is observed on the eleventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Mārgashīrṣa. The fast is broken the following morning in the pāraṇa window after sunrise. Worship is offered to Dāmodara — a form of Kṛṣṇa, the one who was bound at the waist by his mother's rope — and tulasī leaves are central to the offering. The night is kept with dance, song, and praise.

The distinctive feature of Mokṣadā is the transferability of its merit. Many observe this day specifically with the intention of dedicating its fruit to a departed ancestor, particularly one whose post-death status feels uncertain. The Purāṇa describes the practice as a son's duty: What is the use of a son living richly while his father suffers?

Mokṣadā Ekādaśī also falls in the same fortnight as Gītā Jayantī — the day, by tradition, when Kṛṣṇa spoke the Bhagavad Gītā to Arjuna on the field of Kurukṣetra. Some traditions therefore associate Mokṣadā with the Gītā itself, and recitation of the Gītā is added to the day's observances.

The phalaśruti

There cannot be any Ekādaśī superior to this one, Parvata told Vaikhānasa, for granting salvation. The merit of observing it is said to equal the merit of the Vājapeya — one of the great Vedic sacrifices, performed by kings to consecrate sovereignty. Even reading or hearing the account of this Ekādaśī, the text claims, brings the fruit of having performed that sacrifice.

The sage added a line which is rare in the Purāṇic tradition for its directness: O king, I do not know the measure of the religious merit it gives.

Source: Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 39, "The importance of the Mokṣadā 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.