Nirjalā Ekadasi

The vow Bhīma could keep

Retold from the Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 51. The standard English translation, on which this retelling relies, is by N.A. Deshpande (Motilal Banarsidass).

Most of the Ekādaśī stories are answered by Kṛṣṇa. This one is given to Vyāsa, because the question is harder than Kṛṣṇa intends to answer himself.

O Janārdana, Yudhiṣṭhira asks, I have heard the full importance of Aparā. Tell me about the Ekādaśī that would fall in the bright half of Jyeṣṭha.

Kṛṣṇa redirects him. Vyāsa, Satyavatī's pious son, who knows the essence of all sacred texts and who has mastered the Vedas and the Upaniṣads, will tell you about it.

Yudhiṣṭhira goes to his grandsire. I have heard the duties as told by Manu, so also as told by Vasiṣṭha. O Dvaipāyana, please tell me the duties of Viṣṇu's devotees.

Vyāsa answers with a frame the whole chapter rests on.

The duties as told by Manu and Vasiṣṭha cannot be practised in Kali Yuga.

This is one of the great pivots in the Purāṇic literature. The elaborate rituals of the Vedic age — the year-long sacrifices, the multi-day soma rites, the precise pronunciations on which efficacy hangs — were possible in a different time. By the age in which this conversation is being recorded, they are no longer practical. Most people cannot do them. Most people will not do them. And so something simpler must replace them.

The Ekādaśī vow, Vyāsa says, is the essence of what is told in the Purāṇas. It is an easy means, requires little money, little effort, but gives great fruit. One should not eat on the Ekādaśī days of both fortnights.

Then he gives the rule: fast on Ekādaśī. Break the fast on Dvādaśī after worship and after honouring a brāhmaṇa. Do not eat during the impurity caused by a birth or a death in the family.

It is at this point that the chapter takes a turn no other Ekādaśī chapter takes. Bhīma — Bhīmasena, the second of the Pāṇḍava brothers, eater of mountains, slayer of Duryodhana, a man whose hunger is the stuff of epic — trembled like an aśvattha leaf. He bowed to his preceptor and spoke.

O grandsire, listen to my important words. Yudhiṣṭhira, Kuntī, Draupadī, Arjuna, Nakula, Sahadeva — all of them practise this good vow. They never eat on the day of Ekādaśī. They always tell me: O Bhīma, do not eat on the Ekādaśī day. I tell them: For me, hunger is difficult to bear. I will duly give gifts. I will worship Viṣṇu.

The image is comic and tender. Bhīma — the strongest man in the world, who at this moment would later in his life rip open the chest of Duḥśāsana to drink his blood as a vow — is admitting that he cannot go without food. He has a special fire in his belly, he says. The fire is called Vṛka, the wolf-fire. It is extinguished only by eating many times a day. The vow other people keep without strain, the strongest man in the world cannot keep at all.

If you desire to go to heaven, Vyāsa says to him, and if you think hell is painful, you should not eat on the Ekādaśī of both fortnights.

Bhīma tries again. O grandsire, I cannot go on by eating even once a day. How can I put up with a fast? That fire called Vṛka, which is always present in my belly, is extinguished only when I eat many times. I am not able to observe a single fast. Decide one for me — having decided, tell me that by observing which I shall obtain heaven.

Vyāsa pauses. Then he gives the answer.

When the Ekādaśī falls when the Sun is in the second or third sign of the Zodiac — in the month of Jyeṣṭha — a wise man should carefully observe the Ekādaśī fast without even drinking water.

The chapter pauses on the word: without water. He should avoid even sipping a mouthful of water and should not eat at all. Otherwise the vow would be broken.

This is the only Ekādaśī in the cycle that is nirjala — without water. From the sunrise of Ekādaśī to the sunrise of Dvādaśī, the observer does not eat and does not drink. No sip. Not even by accident. Otherwise the vow would be broken.

The trade is explicit. Listen, when a man lives even by avoiding water from one sunrise to the next sunrise, he obtains the fruit of twelve Dvādaśīs. Twelve Dvādaśīs is the full Ekādaśī cycle of a year (each of the twelve months has two Ekādaśīs; each pair shares a single Dvādaśī, so the count comes out near twelve).

In other words: one Nirjalā fast = all twenty-four Ekādaśīs of the year.

For Bhīma — and for any of us who, like him, cannot consistently fast every fortnight, who do not have the temperament for slow steady devotion, who would rather do one hard thing once than twenty-four modest things across the year — this is the bargain offered. One day of total fast in the heat of Jyeṣṭha, when the sun is fierce and the water is most missed. Live through that one day. The whole year's vows are accomplished.

The chapter knows what it is asking. In Kali-age there is no purity of objects. Rites are based on the Smṛtis. How can there be a rite based on the Vedas, when the wicked Kali-age has arrived? The full machinery of the older sacrifices is gone. What remains is the single act of will: do not eat, do not drink, for one day.

Vyāsa adds a description that has reassured the dying ever since. The big-bodied, fierce, dark-formed, fearful messengers of Yama, who hold staffs and nooses, do not approach the man who keeps this fast. But Viṣṇu's messengers, who have put on yellow garments, who are gentle, who hold discs in their hands, whose speed is like that of the mind, take him on his death to Viṣṇu's city.

At the end he offers a mantra for the day:

Even by means of passion as much as the size of the point of an arrow, I have not sinned even in a dream. O lord of gods, I shall eat food on the next day of the day of Viṣṇu.

The vow

Nirjalā Ekādaśī falls on the eleventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Jyeṣṭha — May or June, in the hottest part of the Indian year. The full, classical observance: no food and no water from sunrise of Ekādaśī to sunrise of Dvādaśī.

Many devotees today do not keep the full nirjala fast; the heat and the dehydration risk are real, and the chapter itself notes that the vow is for those who choose it. Those who cannot keep it without water observe a phalāhāra form — fruit, milk, and water permitted. But the nirjala observance remains the gold standard, and the merit attached to it specifically.

The fast is also called Bhīmaseni Ekādaśī or Pāṇḍava Ekādaśī, in honour of the conversation that made the vow available.

The phalaśruti

By the power of Ekādaśī, the chapter says, all the sin of the size of the Meru and Mandara mountains, which a man has committed, is reduced to ash.

Those who cannot give much should give a pitcher containing gold along with garments, on Dvādaśī morning.

The teaching at the heart of Nirjalā is this: not everyone is built for steady, regular discipline. Some people are built for one fierce act. The Purāṇa makes room for both kinds. The person who fasts every fortnight is admirable. The person who fasts once a year, with everything they have, who lives through one whole day without a drop of water in the heat of Jyeṣṭha — the Purāṇa is saying that person, too, has done the full year's work. Bhīma is given the dispensation he asked for. Other strong people whose nature does not bend easily to small disciplines may use it.

Source: Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 51, "Nirjalā 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.