Ekadashi: the eleventh lunar day

The eleventh tithi

Ekadashi means "the eleventh". It is the eleventh Tithi, or lunar day, of each fortnight, or Pakṣa. In the bright half (shukla paksha) it is the span during which the Moon is between 120 and 132 degrees ahead of the Sun; in the dark half (krishna paksha), the span between 300 and 312 degrees. Every lunar month has two fortnights, and so two Ekadashis.

Ekādaśī is among the widely kept fortnightly vratas, or vows of observance, especially in Vaishnava households, which keep it as a fast from grains in honour of Vishnu. Our subject here is the calendar: how the day is chosen and why the count changes.

Twenty-four names

Each Ekadashi of the year has its own name and story, collected in the Ekadashi Mahatmya sections attributed to the Padma Purana and the Bhavishyottara Purana†. Some are familiar well beyond Vaishnava circles:

• Nirjala Ekadashi, in the bright half of Jyeshtha, kept by many without water.
• Devshayani Ekadashi, in the bright half of Ashadha, when Vishnu is said to begin four months of sleep, the chaturmasya.
• Devutthana or Prabodhini Ekadashi, in the bright half of Kartika, when he is said to wake.
• Mokshada Ekadashi, in the bright half of Margashirsha, which many communities also mark as Gita Jayanti.

The names of the dark-half Ekadashis depend on the month system. In the purnimanta reckoning, where a month ends at full Moon, the dark fortnight belongs to the month that follows. So the Ekadashi called Varuthini falls in the dark half of Vaishakha for a purnimanta almanac and in the dark half of Chaitra for an amanta one. It is the same day under two month-names. Our article on the two month systems explains why.

Why some years have twenty-six

Twelve lunar months give twenty-four Ekadashis. About once every thirty-two or thirty-three months the calendar adds an intercalary Māsa, or month, an Adhika māsa, to keep pace with the solar year, and that month brings two more: Padmini in its bright half and Parama in its dark half. A lunar year with an adhika masa therefore has twenty-six. The lunar year that includes the adhika Jyeshtha of mid-May to mid-June 2026 is one of them.

Counting by the Gregorian year gives a different answer. A calendar year of 365 days always holds twenty-four or twenty-five Ekadashis, whatever the lunar months do: the list for 2026 has twenty-four, with Padmini and Parama among them. When someone asks how many Ekadashis "this year" has, it is worth asking which year they mean.

Which day is Ekadashi?

The general rule of the Hindu calendar is that a civil day, sunrise to sunrise, takes its name from the tithi current at sunrise. Ekadashi adds a condition about the tithi before it, Dashami (the tenth). If Dashami is still running at the start of the day, the Ekadashi is called viddha, "pierced", and the fast moves to the next day.

The two main traditions define "the start of the day" differently:

• The smarta rule, followed in many general almanacs, looks at sunrise. If Dashami has ended by sunrise, the day is Ekadashi.
• The vaishnava rule, set out in works such as Gopala Bhatta Gosvami's Hari Bhakti Vilasa (16th century), looks earlier, at arunodaya, "the rising of the dawn", taken as four ghatikas (96 minutes) before sunrise. If Dashami is still running then, the fast moves to the following day.

Kamalakara Bhatta's Nirnaya Sindhu (1612) gathers older opinions on these points and on further cases: an Ekadashi that covers two sunrises, a short Dvadashi (the twelfth), and the special mahadvadashi days recognised in Vaishnava calendars†.

A worked example

Suppose sunrise is at 6:30 and Dashami ends at 5:30 the same morning. By the smarta rule, Dashami has ended before sunrise, so the day is Ekadashi. But arunodaya began at 4:54, while Dashami was still running, so by the vaishnava rule this Ekadashi is pierced and the vaishnava fast is kept the next day. Two almanacs, each correct by its own rule, print consecutive dates. Many printed calendars show both, labelled smarta and vaishnava (or bhagavata).

Since sunrise differs by place, the same tithi can fall on different sides of the line in Delhi and in Chennai. A date that is right for one city is not always right for another.

Breaking the fast

The fast is completed with parana, the breaking of the fast, on Dvadashi the next morning: after sunrise and before Dvadashi ends. Many almanacs also mark hari vasara, the first quarter of Dvadashi, as a period in which parana is not done, and print the parana window accordingly. When Dvadashi is short, the window can be under an hour.

What the calendar does and does not tell us

The calendar fixes the day by an angle between the Moon and the Sun and a rule about sunrise or dawn. Why families keep the fast, and in what form, belongs to their own tradition. We describe the rules for fixing the date; we make no claims about the effects of observing it.

Try it

The Ekadashi page lists every Ekadashi of the year by name for your city. The Nirjala, Devshayani and Devutthana pages show how named Ekadashis are fixed. The Calendar converter shows which lunar month a date falls in, and whether it is an adhika month.

† Marked dates or readings are debated among scholars or still being confirmed by our faculty.