ರಮಾ ಏಕಾದಶಿ | Rama Ekadashi

Rama Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi of the dark fortnight of Ashwina, the last ekadashi to fall before Deepavali. In the amanta reckoning used in Karnataka it belongs to Ashwina. The purnimanta calendars of North India put the same day in Kartika, and it is often listed there under that month. The tithi is the same and the day is the same; only the month label differs.

The name

The Rama of this ekadashi is Ramaa, a name of Lakshmi, with the first vowel long. It is not Rama the son of Dasharatha, and the two are confused often enough to be worth separating. The fortnight this tithi belongs to runs down to Deepavali and the worship of Lakshmi, so the name sits where it belongs.

What is told of it

The Brahmavaivarta Purana gives the mahatmya as an answer of Krishna to Yudhishthira. Chandrabhaga, daughter of king Muchukunda, was married to Shobhana, son of Chandrasena. Shobhana had no strength for a day without food, kept this fast nonetheless, and did not survive it. The phala said to follow was a city of his own on the Mandara mountain, insubstantial at first because the vrata had been kept without full conviction, and made solid when his wife made over to him the merit of her own observance. The purana offers the story as an argument on two points: that the fast counts even when the body is weak, and that its merit can be given to another.

In practice

Little separates Rama Ekadashi from the others. Households in Karnataka that keep ekadashi keep this one in the ordinary way, and its real distinction is its position in the calendar, a few days before Naraka Chaturdashi and the Deepavali sequence. Where an almanac gives it more weight than that, the weight is coming from the season around it rather than from anything in the observance itself.

The rules of the fast, the timing of the parana on the following dwadashi and the question of a viddha ekadashi are set out in the general post on ekadashi.