ಮೋಹಿನಿ ಏಕಾದಶಿ | Mohini Ekadashi

Mohini Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Vaishakha, the same fortnight that carries Akshaya Tritiya eight tithis earlier and Narasimha Jayanti two tithis later.

The name

Unusually for an ekadashi, the name points at an event rather than at a fruit. Mohini is the form Vishnu is said to have taken at the churning of the ocean, when the amrita had been raised and the devas and asuras were disputing it. The asuras were beguiled into accepting her as the one who would share it out, and she gave it to the devas. The day is associated with that episode, though the mahatmya does not claim the churning happened on it.

The mahatmya

The account usually printed is from the Kurma Purana, told to Rama by Vasishtha and repeated to Yudhishthira by Krishna. A merchant’s son of Bhadravati, Dhrishtabuddhi, wasted his inheritance, was turned out by his family and lived by theft in the forest. He came to the ashrama of the sage Kaundinya, who gave him this vrata, and by it he is said to have been freed of the consequences of what he had done.

The phala said to follow is therefore release from moha, the delusion the name carries, and from the weight of past acts. Of the twenty four ekadashis this is the one most often described as removing the effect of a deed rather than granting something new.

In practice

There is no observance that separates Mohini from the rest. No special puja, no distinct food, nothing that Karnataka does on this day and not on the others. The fast and its rules are the general ones on the Ekadashi page. Where it has some presence it is through the story: households that read a chapter on the ekadashi read the churning of the ocean from the Bhagavata on this one. It is worth saying plainly that Mohini is distinguished by a name and a story, not by anything a household does differently.