Devshayani Ekadashi 2028: Date, Parana Time & Vrat Vidhi

Parana (breaking the fast) is on Monday, 3 July 2028, from 5:52 AM to 8:15 AM (New Delhi).

Break with water and tulsi, then fruit, then a light non-grain meal; a full meal after.

From Devshayani to Prabodhini, about four months, Vishnu is held to be asleep; auspicious beginnings — marriage, sacred-thread, house-warming, a new business — are set aside, and vratas, pilgrimage and study are taken up in their place.

It is one of the great Ekadashis, kept as a full grain-free fast with the Vishnu Sahasranama and a night vigil, and marks the start of the intensive Chaturmas observance for sannyasis and many householders.

In Maharashtra it is Ashadhi Ekadashi — the culmination of the wari, when several hundred thousand Warkari pilgrims reach Pandharpur on foot for the darshan of Vitthal, singing abhangs the whole way.

The Bhavishyottara Purana tells that in the reign of King Mandhata a long drought struck his kingdom despite his justice. The sage Angiras told him that the fault lay elsewhere in the age, and that the king and his people should keep the Ashadha Shukla Ekadashi fast; they did, and the rains returned. From this the Ekadashi is 'Padma', the lotus, and a giver of relief.

The devotional frame is Vishnu's yoga-nidra. Having set the world in order for the year, Vishnu lies down on Shesha on the milk ocean for the four rains-months, to rise renewed at Prabodhini; the Chaturmas vratas are kept in his sleeping presence.

Source: Bhavishyottara Purana (the Mandhata narrative); the Padma and Skanda Puranas; see also Ekadashi (Smarta / Vaishnava) for the vrat rules

The Chaturmas restriction on auspicious rites from Devshayani (or from the Ashadha Purnima) to Kartik Purnima is old in the dharmashastra and is why the marriage season closes now across most of the country.

The Ashadhi wari to Pandharpur is documented from at least the 13th century in the abhangs of Jnaneshwar and Namdev, and is today among the largest annual pedestrian pilgrimages in India.

• Bhavishyottara Purana — the Devshayani / Padma Ekadashi mahatmya
• Dharmashastra on the Chaturmas vidhi-nishedha (paused rites)
• The Warkari abhang tradition of the Ashadhi wari

1. The grain-free Ekadashi fast is kept — phalahar or nirjala — with a Vishnu puja, the reading of the Vishnu Sahasranama and the Ekadashi katha, and often a night vigil; the parana is done within the Dwadashi after the Hari Vasara (see the Ekadashi page).
2. A Chaturmas sankalpa is taken — a vrata to keep, a food or habit to give up, a study or japa to add — for the four months to Prabodhini.
3. Auspicious ceremonies are not begun; sannyasis settle in one place; in Maharashtra the wari reaches Pandharpur for the Vitthal darshan and the ringan.

• Maharashtra. Ashadhi Ekadashi — the great wari to Pandharpur, palkhis of Jnaneshwar and Tukaram, the ringan of the horses, and the Vitthal darshan at dawn.
• Odisha. The deities at Puri, freshly returned from the Rath Yatra, are worshipped; Devshayani opens the local Chaturmas.
• North and West India. The Ekadashi fast and the close of the marriage season; the Chaturmas vratas begun at home and in the maths.

• Phalahar — fruit, milk, sabudana, potato, groundnut — The grain-free Ekadashi diet; no beans or grains, sendha namak.
• The parana meal — Broken within the Dwadashi window with tulsi water, then fruit, then a light non-grain meal.

Devshayani Ekadashi is kept on the day when Ekadashi of Ashadha Shukla paksha prevails at sunrise. That day is Sunday, 2 July 2028. Ekadashi holds at sunrise only on this day.

at sunrise

Devshayani Ekadashi is the Shukla Ekadashi of Ashadha — the eleventh tithi of the waxing fortnight, the Moon 120°–132° ahead of the Sun (sidereal Lahiri). It falls near the onset of the monsoon and opens Chaturmas, the four lunar months to Kartik Purnima. The Sun stands in sidereal Mithuna or Karka. The Smarta and Vaishnava reckonings can place it a day apart in a viddha year (see the Ekadashi page). The Gregorian date drifts about 11 days earlier each year and jumps back ~19 days in an adhika-month year.

A lunar date: Ekadashi of the bright half of Ashadha drifts about 11 days earlier each solar year, then jumps back ~19 days when a leap (Adhika) month is inserted.