Ekadashi and the vrat calendar: how the fasting day is fixed
Where today sits in the fortnight, which is what decides a vrat date — New Delhi sunrise on 31 July 2026 carries Krishna Dvitiya, the 2th of the fortnight — the next eleventh falls 9 tithis from here.
The eleventh of each fortnight
Ekadashi is simply the eleventh tithi, and there are two of them in every lunar month — one in the waxing fortnight and one in the waning. That gives twenty-four in an ordinary year and twenty-six in a year carrying an Adhik Maas, since the intercalary month brings its own pair, Padmini and Parama, which appear only in those years.
Each has a name and a story, and the names are how people actually refer to them: Nirjala in the summer, Devshayani opening Chaturmas, Prabodhini closing it, Vaikuntha Ekadashi in the south. The names attach to the lunar month and the fortnight, which means they are stable in the lunar calendar and mobile in the civil one, drifting eleven days earlier each year until an Adhik Maas resets them.
What makes Ekadashi worth a timing guide rather than a devotional one is that it is the clearest everyday demonstration of how tithi rules actually work. Almost everything confusing about Indian calendars — sunrise anchoring, kshaya tithis, regional month naming, competing observance rules — shows up in the question of which day to fast on.
The twenty-four, by month and fortnight
One caution before the table. The month names in the krishna paksha column depend on whether your tradition ends the lunar month at the full moon (purnimanta, common in the north) or at the new moon (amanta, common in the west and south). The same Ekadashi therefore appears under different month names in different regions, and the table below uses the amanta convention.
| Lunar month | Shukla paksha | Krishna paksha |
|---|---|---|
| Chaitra | Kamada | Papmochani |
| Vaishakha | Mohini | Varuthini |
| Jyeshtha | Nirjala | Apara |
| Ashadha | Devshayani | Yogini |
| Shravana | Putrada (Shravana) | Kamika |
| Bhadrapada | Parivartini (Parsva) | Aja |
| Ashwin | Papankusha | Indira |
| Kartik | Prabodhini (Devuthani) | Rama |
| Margashirsha | Mokshada | Utpanna |
| Pausha | Putrada (Pausha) | Saphala |
| Magha | Jaya | Shattila |
| Phalguna | Amalaki | Vijaya |
An Adhik Maas adds Padmini (shukla) and Parama (krishna). Vaikuntha Ekadashi, widely observed in the south, is Mokshada under another name.
Why two households fast a day apart
The default rule is the one that governs the whole panchang: the tithi in force at sunrise names the day. If Ekadashi is running at sunrise, that is Ekadashi. This alone produces regional splits, because sunrise differs by nearly an hour across India and a tithi that begins at 06:10 has started before sunrise in Kolkata and after it in Ahmedabad.
On top of that sits a genuine difference of observance. Where the eleventh tithi is touched by a portion of the tenth at sunrise — a viddha or pierced Ekadashi — the Vaishnava practice generally defers the fast to the following day, while the Smarta practice generally keeps it on the day the tithi holds at sunrise. Both are internally consistent and both are printed in reputable calendars, which is why the same year can show two Ekadashi dates in the same week.
The parana, the breaking of the fast, adds a third layer. It is done on Dwadashi, after sunrise and traditionally within a defined window, and must not fall during Hari Vasara — the first quarter of the twelfth tithi. Because the Dwadashi can be short, the window is sometimes narrow, which is why almanacs print a parana time rather than saying simply the next morning.
What a vrat day means for muhurat
Very little, and this is worth saying because the two calendars sit on the same page and get conflated. An observance day is not an electional verdict: Ekadashi is a fasting day, not a barred day, and several occasions on this site list Ekadashi among their favoured tithis — the eleventh belongs to the Nanda class and is a normal part of the auspicious set.
The practical interaction is domestic rather than doctrinal. A household observing a strict fast is not going to want a wedding reception on the same date, and a family that keeps Nirjala will not schedule a housewarming feast against it. That is a logistics constraint and a real one, but it is not the panchang telling you the day is unsuitable.
The reverse conflation happens too. Amavasya and the Rikta tithis are excluded from beginnings and are nonetheless important observance days — Mahalaya Amavasya and Maha Shivaratri among them. A day can be devotionally significant and electionally closed at the same time without any contradiction, because the two systems are answering different questions.
If you take the vrat calendar seriously enough to want it right, the one investment that pays is finding a computed panchang for your own city and sticking to it. Ekadashi dates are the most sensitive in the whole calendar to the sunrise convention, because the eleventh tithi frequently changes hands within the hour that separates Indian sunrises. A source that publishes per-city timings will occasionally disagree with a national one, and when it does the per-city figure is the one that reflects the sky over your own house.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my calendar show Ekadashi on a different day from my neighbour’s?
Usually one of two reasons. Either the calendars follow different observance rules for a pierced tithi, with the Vaishnava practice deferring to the next day and the Smarta practice keeping the sunrise day; or they were computed for different locations, and the tithi genuinely held at sunrise in one place and not the other. Both calendars can be correct at once.
Is it inauspicious to begin something on Ekadashi?
No. The eleventh is part of the standard auspicious tithi set and appears in the favoured list for several occasions, including marriage. The fast is a devotional observance rather than a restriction on activity, and the only real conflict is practical — a household keeping a strict fast will not usually want to host a large event on the same day.
Related guides
How this guide is maintained
Everything computed on this site â the sunrise and sunset behind every window on this page, and the tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana behind the date tables â comes from a Lahiri sidereal ephemeris and a NOAA sunrise model applied to the exact coordinates of the city shown, with New Delhi as the reference city for anything not city-specific. Where this guide describes a rule that genuinely varies between texts, regions or family traditions, it says so in the paragraph rather than picking a side quietly, and where the site’s own date scorer takes a documented shortcut, the shortcut is named.
What no guide on this site can do is weigh your own chart. The tables here are a panchang shortlist — the classical tests a calendar can settle — and the personal layer that decides between the surviving dates is a separate step. Start with the occasion pages for computed dates, and see how we compute muhurat for the full method.
Written and maintained by Savan Vyas. A rule applied wrongly here is a bug, and corrections are genuinely welcome.
For a full personalised muhurat matched to your own birth chart, ask Soma on AskSoma.