Saphala Ekadashi is the first of the named Ekadashis that a calendar year meets in winter. Its name means fruitful, and the day is kept by people who are about to begin a piece of work and would like it to succeed. It is a quiet, cold-season vrat, and in the old telling it is the Ekadashi on which a prince found his way back home.
Saphala Ekadashi falls in the Krishna paksha, the waning fortnight, of Margashirsha in the amanta calendar (months that end at the new Moon). In the purnimanta calendar of north India, where the month ends at the full Moon, the same fortnight belongs to Pausha.
The katha
The tradition attributes the stories of the Ekadashis, Saphala Ekadashi among them, to the Padma Purana and the Bhavishyottara Purana, where they are told as conversations, often with Krishna answering Yudhishthira. This is how the story of Saphala is usually told.
In the city of Champavati lived a king named Mahishmat, who had four sons. The eldest, Lumbhaka, was a restless young man who wasted his father’s wealth, mocked the gods and brought shame on the family. At last the king, grieved and out of patience, sent him out of the kingdom with nothing but the clothes he wore.
Lumbhaka took shelter in a forest near the city and lived by stealing from travellers. One winter, on the night before an Ekadashi, the cold was so hard that he lay half conscious under an old peepal tree and could not sleep. The next day, weak with hunger, he gathered what fruit he could find, laid it at the foot of the tree and said, “May this please Vishnu.” Without knowing it he had fasted through the Ekadashi and stayed awake through the night.
The tradition says that this small, unplanned act turned his mind. Not long afterwards the king heard of his son’s change, repented his own anger and called him home. Lumbhaka took up his duties, ruled well in time, and kept Saphala Ekadashi every year afterwards. The story is told to say that the day rewards sincerity even when it comes late.
How the fast is kept
Many families begin the day with a bath, light a lamp before an image of Vishnu or Krishna, and offer fruit, tulsi leaves and incense. Fruit is the natural offering for Saphala, and in some homes a fruit of each kind found in the market is placed before the lamp.
Grains and beans are left out of the day’s food; milk, fruit, potatoes, sabudana and rock salt are the usual choices. Some people keep a night vigil with devotional singing, which echoes the sleepless night of the story, and it is also kept as a day to read quietly.
The table above applies the Smarta rule to Saphala Ekadashi: the fast is kept on the civil day when Ekadashi is in force at sunrise. Many Vaishnava traditions use a stricter test and may keep Saphala Ekadashi a day later, so a household that follows one should use its own sampradaya’s calendar. The parana after Saphala Ekadashi is on the next morning, after sunrise, while Dwadashi is running and outside its first quarter (Hari Vasara), and the Timing column gives that window. Saphala Ekadashi asks for attention more than hunger. Where a full fast does not suit you, because of pregnancy, age, illness or medicine, fruit, milk and prayer are enough, and a doctor is the right person to ask about anything more.
Where it sits in the year
In the round of the year, Mokshada Ekadashi comes before Saphala Ekadashi and Pausha Putrada Ekadashi after it. Every Ekadashi of the year is listed on the Ekadashi page; the steps of worship for Saphala Ekadashi are in the Ekadashi vrat vidhi, and the tithi itself is explained on the Ekadashi tithi page.