ವಾಮನ ಜಯಂತಿ | Vamana Jayanti

Vamana Jayanti marks the appearance of Vishnu as Vamana, the dwarf brahmachari, the fifth of the ten avataras. It falls in the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada and is decided by the tithi running at sunrise.

The story

Bali, grandson of Prahlada, had taken the three worlds from Indra. He was not a cruel king. He was generous, truthful and devoted, and that is what makes the episode difficult rather than simple. Vishnu came to his sacrifice as a small brahmachari boy and asked for three paces of ground measured by his own feet. Shukracharya, Bali’s preceptor, saw what was coming and told him to refuse. Bali had promised, and he kept the promise. The dwarf then grew: one stride covered the earth, the second the sky, and there was nowhere for the third. Bali offered his own head. Vishnu set his foot on it and pressed him down to Patala, and gave him Patala to rule and the right to return once a year to see the people he had ruled.

That yearly return is kept in Kerala as Onam, which falls in the same season but is reckoned by the Malayalam solar month and by the nakshatra Thiruvonam, not by this tithi. Karnataka keeps the return at a different point in the year altogether, as Bali Padyami, the day after Deepavali amavasya.

The day and its other name

The ekadashi of Bhadrapada shukla paksha is Parivartini Ekadashi, also called Parsva Ekadashi and, in many almanacs, Vamana Ekadashi. The name means the turning: Vishnu, asleep through the four months of chaturmasya, is held to turn on to his other side on this day. The ekadashi fast is kept as usual, and the Vamana observance is folded into it in most households: a fast, the reading of the Vamana story from the Bhagavata, and dana, of which the dana of a small measure of grain or curd is the form most often named.

Some traditions keep Vamana Jayanti on the dwadashi that follows instead, as Vamana Dwadashi, on the reasoning that the birth took place at midday under the nakshatra Shravana. Anudina marks the ekadashi. The difference is old, it is not a mistake on either side, and a household that has always kept the dwadashi should go on keeping it.

What the story is usually taken to mean

It is read as the answer to a straightforward question: what happens when a good man holds more than his share. Bali is not punished for wickedness. He is moved, and he is moved by a request so small that refusing it would have cost him nothing and granting it cost him everything. The commentators return to the fact that he was warned and gave anyway. Vamana is invoked for that reason for the strength to give, and for the discipline of the brahmachari, and his image, a short figure with an umbrella, a water pot and a staff, is deliberately unimposing.