Pāpamochanī Ekadasi

The sage who lost fifty-seven years

Retold from the Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 46. The standard English translation, on which this retelling relies, is by N.A. Deshpande (Motilal Banarsidass).

Kṛṣṇa tells Yudhiṣṭhira a story Lomaśa once told the emperor Māndhātṛ. The story is about a young sage who knew exactly how much time was passing and did not know at all.

In a forest called Caitraratha — full of bees, frequented by celestial nymphs, where gandharva maidens rejoiced with kinnaras to the sound of musical instruments — many sages practised severe penance. Indra and the gods came there to amuse themselves. There was nothing else as delightful as the Caitraratha forest, the text says, with the sigh of a description that has already known what is about to break.

One of the young sages was named Medhāvin. He lived in the hermitage of Cyavana, his father. He was a celibate. He wore a white sacred thread. The Purāṇa describes him with the kind of detail a poet uses when a fall is coming: with his body shooting up with youth, he shone. Wearing a white sacred thread and appearing like another Cupid, that Medhāvin lived in the auspicious hermitage of Cyavana.

A celestial nymph called Mañjughoṣā saw him. She decided to infatuate him.

She knew enough of his power to be cautious. She set up camp at a krośa — about two miles — away from his hermitage, and she sang. She sang sweetly. She pressed the strings of her lute. Cupid himself, the chapter says, took up residence in her body for this work: her eyebrows became the curved end of the bow. Her glances became the string. Her eyes along with her eyelashes were the arrows. Her breasts were the tent. She started for victory.

Medhāvin heard her singing.

He came toward the music. He saw her — flowers in her hair, sandalwood on her body, anklets and bracelets and a girdle that tinkled when she moved — and Cupid worked from his side too. She approached him. She kept her lute on the ground. She embraced him, the text says, as a creeper would encircle a tree shaking due to the velocity of the wind.

He rejoiced with her.

That is the entire description of the fall. The text is unsparing of him not because he was wicked but because what he was about to do was something only this kind of man could do: he was about to lose track of time.

The lover did not know night or day, the Purāṇa says, while rejoicing with her.

After what felt to him like some time, she said: O brāhmaṇa, give me the order to go to my own region.

Today only, he answered, just at the beginning of nightfall, you have come. Stay with me till morning prayer.

She, afraid of his curse if she refused, stayed. For a long time. The Purāṇa here gives a number that is the centre of the whole story:

She rejoiced with the sage for fifty-five years, nine months, and three days. But that period was just half a night for him.

When she said again — O brāhmaṇa, let me go — he replied: It is the morning. Wait till my evening prayer.

She, smiling slightly, said: O sinless best brāhmaṇa, how long your prayer has extended. Favour me, and take into consideration the time that has passed.

Then he counted.

He counted, the text says, with his eyes dilated due to wonder. Fifty-seven years had passed. His penance — earned with great effort — had been spent on a single half-night of love. He stood now in his body that had not aged because of the power of what he had stored up before, but that power was gone. His austerity had vanished. His store was empty.

What he did with this knowledge is what the Purāṇa cannot fully forgive. He got angry with her. His senses, agitated, his lips throbbing, his eyes shooting sparks of fire, he cursed her: Be a female goblin. Fie upon you, a sinful woman of bad conduct, an unchaste woman, who loves sins.

It was not her sin alone. It was their sin. But he, scorched by his own waste, turned the heat onto her.

She, even cursed, was wiser than he was. O best brāhmaṇa, she said, bent with shame, appease your curse. For the friendship of the good takes place by walking together for seven steps or exchanging seven words. O brāhmaṇa, with you I have passed many years. Two miles of seven steps and seven words. Many years for him too.

He answered then with a vow.

In the dark half of Caitra, he said, falls the auspicious Ekādaśī called Pāpamocanī, which destroys all sins. Having observed it, your state of a female goblin will go away.

He went home then, to his father.

Cyavana looked at him. What is this that you have done? You have destroyed your religious merit, O son.

O father, Medhāvin said, I committed a sin. I rejoiced with a celestial nymph. Tell me an expiation.

In the dark half of Caitra, his father said, falls the Ekādaśī called Pāpamocanī. When its vow is observed, the heap of sins would perish.

Both observed it — Medhāvin in his father's hermitage, Mañjughoṣā wherever the curse had taken her. The sage's sin perished. His penance returned. The nymph's goblin-state lifted. She took her divine form and ascended to heaven.

The vow

Pāpamocanī Ekādaśī is observed on the eleventh tithi of the dark fortnight of Caitra — the first lunar month of the year in many reckonings. The fast is broken on Dvādaśī.

This Ekādaśī is observed by those whose lapse was not a single act but a duration. The chapter is specific about who comes to this vow: all those who have killed a brāhmaṇa or have snatched gold or are drunkards or have gone to the teacher's bed — those, in other words, who have crossed lines they once thought they would not cross. The Ekādaśī does not undo what was done. It restores what was lost in the doing.

The phalaśruti

All the sin, however little, of those best men who observe the vow of the Pāpamocanī would perish. Reciting or listening to the account gives the fruit of the gift of a thousand cows.

The teaching at the heart of this Ekādaśī is the strangeness of time. Medhāvin's body had stored up fifty-seven years of penance. He spent it on what felt to him like half a night. The fast of Pāpamocanī is the act of giving up a single day deliberately — choosing, this once, to count the hours. The lesson is the inverse of his lesson. He thought he was awake for a few moments and was not. The observer of the vow is awake for one full day and night and knows it. The two cancel out. The store fills again.

Source: Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 46, "Pāpamocanī 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.