Parivartinī Ekadasi

The king who would not kill the innocent

Retold from the Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 57. The standard English translation, on which this retelling relies, is by N.A. Deshpande (Motilal Banarsidass).

This Ekādaśī, the midpoint of Vishnu's four-month sleep, is the day he turns on his side. The word parivartinī means the turning. After two months on one side of Śeṣa, the great serpent on which he rests, the lord shifts. The cosmos turns with him.

Kṛṣṇa tells Yudhiṣṭhira a story Brahmā had once told Nārada — about a king and a drought.

The king's name was Māndhātṛ. He was born in the family of Vivasvat, the sun. He was a valorous emperor, true to his word. He looked after his subjects like his own sons. The Purāṇa describes his reign with the kind of summary that lists what a perfect kingdom looks like: no famine, no agonies, no diseases, subjects healthy and prosperous, wealth in the treasury earned justly, all castes and stages of life abiding by their duties.

There is a line about his country that is striking: In the kingdom of that king, the land resembled the desire-yielding cow.

This was a kingdom where what people needed appeared, the way milk appears from a good cow without anyone having to wrest it.

Many years passed this way.

Then, the Purāṇa says — with the calm of a tradition that knows what cycles do — one year there was indeed the maturity of his acts. The clouds did not shower water in his country for three years.

Three years of drought. The text does not blame the king for it. The maturity of his acts is a phrase that could refer to anything from a past life. But the effect on his kingdom was catastrophic. Subjects, oppressed by hunger, were frustrated. They were without Svāhā (the offerings to the gods) and Svadhā (the offerings to ancestors) and Vaṣaṭkāra (the offerings to deities) and Vedic study. The whole machinery of religious life had stopped, because none of these offerings can be made without food and water.

The subjects gathered. They came to the king.

What they said is one of the most condensed theological statements in the chapter:

O best king, listen. In the Purāṇas, the wise have called āpa (water) by the name nārā (the waters). That is the lord's abode. Therefore, he is called Nārāyaṇa — the one who dwells in the waters. Viṣṇu, the lord in the form of rain, is present everywhere. He alone causes rain. From rain comes food. From food, subjects spring up. Without it, subjects perish.

The chain of being is laid out: water → rain → food → people. Each rests on the previous. The drought has cut the chain at its root. The kingdom is dying from the top down, because the lord who is the waters has not appeared.

The king answered them with grief.

You have told the truth. You have told no lie. Food is called Brahman. Everything is placed in food. Beings spring up from food. The world exists due to food. Due to the bad behaviour of kings, subjects are oppressed. Yet — even thinking with my intellect, I do not see anything like this done by me.

He could not identify what he had done wrong. But he accepted the burden. With a desire for the well-being of the subjects, I shall strive.

He left his palace. He saluted the Creator. Then he rode into a dense forest, seeking principal sages, seeking the hermitages of ascetics, looking for someone who could see what he could not.

He found the sage Aṅgiras — Brahmā's son, whose lustre brightened the four quarters of the sky, who was, the Purāṇa says, as it were another Brahmā.

Māndhātṛ got down from his vehicle. With his palms joined he saluted the sage's feet. He sat near the sage when invited.

The sage asked the reason of his arrival.

O revered one, the king said, when I was righteously looking after the earth, there was a drought. I do not see the reason. I have come to you. Give delight to my subjects by securing their welfare.

Aṅgiras went into meditation. He saw what was hidden.

When he opened his eyes, what he said put the king in the worst position a king can be in.

O king, the sage said, this is the Kṛta age — the best age, the first age. In this age people are devoted to Brahman, and Dharma stands on four feet. In this age, only brāhmaṇas practise penance — not other people.

Then the verdict.

In your country, a chāṇḍāla is practising penance.

A chāṇḍāla — the lowest, the most despised — was performing tapas, austerity. According to the cosmic order of the Kṛta age (as the sage saw it), only brāhmaṇas had the right to practice this kind of penance. A chāṇḍāla doing tapas was an offence against the order that held the rain in place.

For this reason, the sage said, the cloud does not shower. Make an effort to kill him, by which your sin will come to an end.

The king was given a clean instruction. Kill the offender. Restore the order. Save your kingdom.

Māndhātṛ refused.

The Purāṇa preserves his refusal in a single sentence — the sentence that makes this Ekādaśī's story one of the most important moral moments in the cycle:

I shall not kill that innocent one practising penance. Instruct me in righteousness which will destroy the trouble.

He would not do it.

He did not argue with the sage's diagnosis. He did not deny that the chāṇḍāla's tapas was the cause. He simply said: I will not kill a person who is doing no one any harm, who is in fact reaching toward god, for the sake of relieving my kingdom. I refuse to choose that solution. Tell me another.

This is a king saying no to a sage. Refusing the authority of received wisdom because it asks him to commit an injustice.

The sage approved of the answer. The Purāṇa does not write that explicitly — it does not need to. The instruction he gives next is the vow.

The sage told the king about Parivartinī Ekādaśī, the eleventh day of the bright fortnight of Bhādrapada, the day Viṣṇu turns. Observe its vow, he said. By that merit, the order would be restored without harm to any creature.

Māndhātṛ returned to his city. He observed the vow. The rain came.

The vow

Parivartinī Ekādaśī falls on the eleventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Bhādrapada. The fast is broken on Dvādaśī. The observance is the standard one.

This Ekādaśī is also called Padmā in the chapter title, after the lotus that is Viṣṇu's mark, and Vāmana in some traditions (the lord's fifth incarnation is sometimes specifically invoked on this day). But the name most often used is Parivartinī — the day the lord turns onto his other side, halfway through his cosmic sleep.

The chapter prescribes equal worship of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva on this day — one of the few Ekādaśīs where the three are named together. The day belongs to all of them, since it sits in the middle of Chaturmāsya and the world is currently being held up by their joint quiet.

The phalaśruti

The chapter, beyond the story, does not dwell on enumerated merit. What it gives is the story's lesson.

The teaching at the heart of this Ekādaśī is what the king said when the sage asked him to kill an innocent ascetic. I shall not kill that innocent one practising penance. The order of the world had been threatened. The remedy was prescribed. The king refused the remedy because it required injustice.

The vow he was given instead is the one offered to anyone facing a situation in which the only suggested solution requires harming someone who does not deserve it. The Purāṇa's quiet promise — and its serious one — is that there is always another way, and the vow opens the door to that other way.

The lord turns on his side. Something blocked turns with him.

Source: Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 57, "Padmā / Parivartinī 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.