Varūthinī Ekadasi

The hierarchy of gifts

Retold from the Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 48. The standard English translation, on which this retelling relies, is by N.A. Deshpande (Motilal Banarsidass).

Varūthinī Ekādaśī, falling in the dark fortnight of Vaiśākha, is one of the few in this sequence without a long narrative. The chapter instead lays out a teaching — about gifts, about restraints, and about the women and men whom this Ekādaśī has carried home across many ages.

The name Varūthinī means protective — protective in the way armour is protective, in the way the boundary of a fortified city is protective. The vow surrounds the observer. It defends what is theirs.

Kṛṣṇa begins by telling Yudhiṣṭhira who came to safety by this vow.

Due to the Varūthinī-vow only Māndhātṛ went to heaven. Māndhātṛ was the emperor we have already met, the questioner of Vasiṣṭha in Chapter 45. So also many other kings like Dhundhumāra went to heaven.

And then a line which startles by its strangeness: Lord Śiva became free from the sin of breaking the skull of Brahmā. This is the famous Brahmahatyā — the killing of a brāhmaṇa, here in its most cosmic form, since Brahmā is the brāhmaṇa, the very source of the priestly stream. There is a longer story behind this single line. Śiva, in his fury, had once severed one of Brahmā's five heads, and the skull had stuck to his hand as a sign of the unkillable sin. He carried it for ages, begging from door to door, unable to pry it loose. According to this chapter, it was Varūthinī Ekādaśī that gave him his hand back.

If the vow can free Śiva from the sin of killing the creator, it can free anyone from anything.

One who observes the vow of Varūthinī, the chapter goes on, gets the fruit equal to that obtained by giving a bhāra of gold on Kurukṣetra when the Sun is auspicious. An unfortunate woman who observes it obtains good fortune. The vow gives pleasures and salvation. It removes all sins. It puts an end to rebirth.

Then Kṛṣṇa turns to the question of giving, which is the spine of this chapter.

He lays out the hierarchy.

Giving of elephants is superior to giving of horses. That is, the gift's value rises with its rarity and difficulty. Giving of land is superior to giving of elephants. Land is permanence; elephants are wealth. Gift of sesamum-seeds is superior even to that. Because sesame, small as it is, multiplies into generations of merit — one seed becomes many plants, many seeds, many fields. Giving of gold is superior to that. And giving of food is superior to that. Food is the most immediate gift — the one that prevents death this hour. There was not, nor will there be, a greater gift than that of food. By means of food the manes, gods, and men are satisfied.

Then, separately:

Giving one's daughter in marriage is said by the wise to be like that. That is, equal to the gift of food. (The Purāṇa is not glossing women as commodities here; it is honouring the magnitude of releasing a beloved daughter into another house.) The lord himself said that giving of a cow is equal to that.

And finally — surpassing all the others, sitting at the top of the hierarchy: Of all the gifts that have been mentioned, giving knowledge is the best.

The vow of Varūthinī gives the observer merit equal to that — the merit of giving knowledge. One Ekādaśī, once a year, in the dark fortnight of Vaiśākha, equals the lifetime work of teaching.

But the Purāṇa is not finished. It gives one of its most pointed moral teachings here.

Those men who, deluded by sin, subsist on the money got for giving their daughter in marriage, lose their religious merit and go to hell. A man who takes a bride-price (or in the modern sense, who treats the marriage of a daughter as a transaction enriching the father) becomes, in the next existence, a cat.

Then the chapter sets out the three days' restrictions in remarkable specificity.

The vow

On the tenth day (Daśamī), the observer avoids: bell-metal vessels, flesh, masūra (lentil), thick peas, kodrava grain (a poor man's millet), vegetables, honey, food prepared by others, and sexual union.

On the eleventh day (Ekādaśī itself), the observer avoids: gambling, sport, sleep during the day, tāmbūla (betel), cleaning the teeth, censuring others, wickedness, theft, harming others, sex, anger, and lies.

On the twelfth day (Dvādaśī), the observer avoids: bell-metal, flesh, liquor, honey, oil, conversation with the fallen, exercise, journey, food, sexual union, mounting a bull, and food prepared with masūra.

The three days together constitute the full observance. The Ekādaśī itself sits in the middle, the strictest day, but the day before and the day after are also days of restraint.

The Purāṇa specifically commends this vow to those afraid of the planet Saturn — Saturn, the son of the enemy of the night (the night's enemy being the Sun, whose son Yama is also the brother of Saturn in some reckonings).

The phalaśruti

To those who have observed the Varūthinī vow in this manner, it gives, after destroying all their sins, an undecaying position in the end.

Reciting or hearing the account gives the fruit of giving a thousand cows. The observer, free from all sins, is honoured in Viṣṇu's world.

The teaching at the heart of this chapter is the hierarchy of giving. Most people, when they give, give what they have to spare. The Purāṇa is asking the observer to look at gifts differently. The food on the plate, the knowledge in the head, the daughter in the house — these are not yours to keep. They are yours to pass on. The vow of Varūthinī is the day when the observer practises this perspective by giving up, for one day, what they ordinarily insist on having: meat, betel, sleep, anger, speech against others, sex, lies. What protects you, the chapter is saying, is not what you have stockpiled. What protects you is what you have let go.

Source: Padma Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 48, "Varūthinī 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.