ಪಾಪಾಂಕುಶಾ ಏಕಾದಶಿ | Papankusha Ekadashi

Papankusha Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Ashwayuja. It falls the day after Vijayadashami, and it is effectively the close of the Navaratri fortnight: the nine nights, the dashami and then this.

The name

An ankusha is the goad an elephant is controlled with, a hook on a short handle. Papankusha is the goad held against papa. The image is worth pausing on, because it says something the other names do not. Most ekadashi names promise that fault is washed away or burnt up. This one says it is held back, checked, turned, the way a very large animal is turned by a small hook in a practised hand.

The mahatmya

The account given with it is from the Brahmavaivarta Purana, told by Krishna to Yudhishthira. Krodhana, a hunter of the Vindhyas who had lived by violence, was told by Yama’s messengers that his time had come. He went to the sage Angira, who gave him this vrata at the end of his life, and he is said to have gone to the higher worlds by it. The phala said to follow is stated in the usual comparative form, the merit of a thousand ashwamedha and a hundred rajasuya sacrifices, and the point the story is built to make is that the vrata is not closed to a man who comes to it late.

In practice

Nothing in the keeping distinguishes this ekadashi. What it has is its position. A Karnataka household comes to it straight off the Navaratri fortnight, with the Saraswati books not long put back and the Ayudha Puja and Vijayadashami just behind, and for many it is the first ordinary observance after ten days that were anything but ordinary. Some families keep this ekadashi who keep few others, for that reason rather than for the mahatmya.

The fast, the reckoning of the tithi at sunrise, the question of an ekadashi pierced by dashami and the parana on dwadashi are the general rules, set out on the Ekadashi page. The dashami question is worth a glance here in particular, since the dashami in question is Vijayadashami itself.