ಸಫಲಾ ಏಕಾದಶಿ | Saphala Ekadashi

Saphala Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi of the dark fortnight of Margashira in the amanta reckoning of Karnataka; purnimanta almanacs in the North list the same day under Pausha. The name means fruitful, or bearing fruit, and the phala said to follow is that what is undertaken afterwards comes to something.

The mahatmya

The Brahmanda Purana gives the story of Lumpaka, eldest son of Mahishmata, king of Champavati, who was so given to cruelty and theft that his father drove him out into the forest. He lived there by robbery. On one cold night he could neither light a fire nor find anything to eat, and lay awake under a peepal tree until the sun came up, having fasted and kept vigil without meaning to do either. In the morning he gathered fallen fruit and set it down at the foot of the tree before touching it. The purana says the day was this ekadashi, that the unintended vrata worked all the same, and that he was restored to his father and ruled well afterwards. The moral drawn is that the observance is stronger than the intention behind it, a claim the puranas make for several of these days.

In practice

Here candour is more useful than detail. Nothing in the keeping of Saphala Ekadashi distinguishes it from any other. There is no separate puja, no particular food, no custom attached to it in Karnataka, and the offering of fruit that some accounts mention comes out of the story rather than out of practice. It is kept as the fortnightly ekadashi is kept, and lists that give it a set of special rituals are inventing them.

What can honestly be said about its position is that it falls in the coldest and shortest part of the year, in the run of days before Sankranti, and that a day without food is harder then than in most months. The older manuals allow for that in the usual way, by permitting the lighter forms of the fast to those who need them.

The rules of the fast, the timing of the parana and the viddha question are in the general post on ekadashi.