ಕಾಮದಾ ಏಕಾದಶಿ | Kamada Ekadashi

Kamada Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Chaitra. In the amanta reckoning followed in Karnataka, Chaitra opens the lunar year, so this is the first of the year’s named ekadashis, falling in the same fortnight as Rama Navami two tithis earlier.

The name

Kamada is read as the giver of what is wished for, from kama, a desire, and da, one who gives. Almost every ekadashi name is of this shape: it names the fruit the vrata is said to yield rather than anything about the day itself.

The mahatmya

The account usually printed with it comes from the Varaha Purana, where it is told to King Dilipa by Vasishtha. A gandharva named Lalit, singing in the court of the naga king Pundarika, lost the thread of his song because his mind was on his wife Lalita, and the king cursed him into the body of a rakshasa. Lalita kept this vrata and made over its merit to her husband, and he was returned to his own form.

The phala said to follow is accordingly the lifting of a curse and the release from a rakshasa birth, and beyond that the granting of a desire long held. The text also allows the merit to be assigned to another person, which is the point the story is built to make. None of this is the writer’s claim; it is what the mahatmya says, and it is repeated here because it is the reason the day carries the name it does.

In practice

There is nothing in the observance that sets Kamada apart from any other ekadashi. The fast, the reckoning of the tithi, the question of an ekadashi pierced by dashami and the timing of the parana are the general rules, and they are given on the Ekadashi page. What this one has is a position rather than a practice. A household taking up the vrata for the first time usually begins here, because it is where the count of the year begins.