ವೈಕುಂಠ ಏಕಾದಶಿ | Vaikuntha Ekadashi

Vaikuntha Ekadashi is the eleventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Pausha, and it is the largest single day in the Sri Vaishnava year. On it the northern gate of the sanctum, the Paramapada Vasal, is opened at Srirangam and at Vaishnava temples that follow its usage, and the crowd passes through it before dawn.

Where it sits in the year

Pausha shukla paksha falls within the solar month a Tamil reader calls Margazhi and Karnataka calls Dhanurmasa, the month in which the sun stands in Dhanus. That month is itself given to Vishnu: the morning puja is shifted earlier, to the hour before sunrise, and the Tiruppavai and Tiruvempavai are recited through it. Vaikuntha Ekadashi is the height of that month.

Why it is never moved

This is the one ekadashi in the year that Anudina marks as not viddha, and it is worth understanding what that means.

A tithi is called viddha, pierced, when the preceding tithi was still running at the sunrise of the day in question. The ordinary Vaishnava rule is that an ekadashi pierced by dashami is not fit for the fast, and the fast moves to the next day, the dwadashi. This is the commonest reason a Vaishnava household and a smarta household keep the same ekadashi a day apart, and it is explained on the general Ekadashi page along with the fast itself.

Vaikuntha Ekadashi is exempt. The day on which Ekadashi is running at sunrise carries it, and it is not pushed forward whatever dashami did. The reason is practical as much as doctrinal: the gate opening, the temple programme and the day itself are tied to the tithi in Dhanurmasa, and a temple cannot move a festival of that size on a household rule. So on a year when the viddha rule would have shifted the fast, the two separate: the temple keeps Vaikuntha Ekadashi on the sunrise day, and a household that follows the strict viddha rule may still keep its own fast on the next.

Srirangam and Tirumala

At Srirangam the day opens the Ra Pathu, the ten nights of the Adhyayana Utsava, following the ten days of the Pagal Pathu; the whole is twenty one days of recitation of the Nalayira Divya Prabandham. The deity passes through the Paramapada Vasal in the early hours and the crowd follows. At Tirumala the corresponding gate is the Vaikuntha Dwaram, and the queue runs for days.

In Karnataka the day is kept at Udupi and at Vaishnava temples generally, with a full night of Vishnu Sahasranama, Dhanurmasa puja before dawn, and the fast. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana call the same day Mukkoti Ekadashi.

What is easily confused

North Indian almanacs call this same tithi Putrada Ekadashi, the Pausha Putrada, and print no Vaikuntha at all. It is one day under two names, not two days.

There is also a difference of reckoning worth knowing. The Tamil tradition defines the day as the bright ekadashi falling within Margazhi, a solar month, while the lunar reckoning names it the ekadashi of Pausha shukla. In the ordinary year these are the same day. Anudina follows the lunar reckoning.