Mahijit and the Putradā Ekādaśī

King Mahijit of Māhishmatī was a just and pious ruler, but he had no son. The ṛshi Lomaśa looked into the king’s earlier birth and found the cause. Lomaśa told the people to keep the Putradā Ekādaśī and give its puṇya (merit) to the king. The queen then had a son. This is told in the Padma Mahā Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 55. The Putradā Ekādaśī is the Ekādaśī of the bright fortnight of Śrāvaṇa.

King Mahijit’s sorrow

At the start of the Dvāpara age, a king named Mahijit ruled in the city of Māhishmatī. He was a model of royal dharma. His treasury held only wealth that was earned justly. He had never robbed brāhmaṇas or devas. He never took another man’s deposit. He had always treated his subjects as his sons. He punished wrongdoers fairly, even when they were his own relatives, and he honoured the learned. Yet in spite of this clean life, he never had a son.

Mahijit grew old without an heir. His grief grew, and he put a question to his own subjects and priests. He could find no wrong in this life, so what pāpa (sin) had kept a son from him? The brāhmaṇas and citizens could not name the cause. They decided to go into the forest and look for a ṛshi who could find the root of it in karma.

Finding Lomaśa

Deep in the forest the king’s subjects and the brāhmaṇas found the āśrama of the ṛshi Lomaśa. He was very old and lived alone, taking no food. He had full control over his senses and his anger, and he knew all the sacred texts deeply. He was known by this mark. With each kalpa that passed, one hair of his body withered and fell. This is why he is called Lomaśa, “the hairy one”. It shows that he had lived through many cycles of creation. He could see the truth of former births. The people bowed to him and honoured him as greater, in this matter, even than Brahmā.

Meditation and the cause

Lomaśa heard their account of the king’s righteousness and of his having no son. Then he sat silent in meditation for a time and used his sight to look at the king’s earlier birth.

He saw the cause. In a former life Mahijit had been a poor vaiśya, a trader who went from village to village. On the tenth day of the bright fortnight of Jyeshṭha, when the Sun stood in the middle of the sky, he came to a pond at the edge of a village. He was very thirsty. As he reached the water, a cow came with her calf and began to drink. Mahijit drove her away and drank the water himself. By keeping a thirsty mother cow and her calf from water, he made the karma of having no son in his next birth, as a king.

The Putradā vrata

The people asked Lomaśa how this pāpa could be undone. He told them to keep the Putradā Ekādaśī of the bright fortnight of Śrāvaṇa. The name Putradā means “giver of sons”. He told them to give the puṇya of the vow to the king as a gift.

The people went back to Māhishmatī. They kept the Putradā Ekādaśī with the proper rites and a night vigil, and they gave its puṇya to Mahijit. The gift worked. The queen conceived at once. In time she gave birth to a bright and auspicious son.

On the twelfth day of the same bright fortnight of Śrāvaṇa, when the Sun was in Cancer, a pavitraka was made in honour of Bhagavān Vāsudeva and offered to him. A pavitraka is a sacred ring threaded from several materials. Lomaśa’s instructions also gave the way to make the pavitraka, with threads of gold, silver, copper, silk or cotton, and with fibres of lotus, kuśa or kaśa.

Sources

• Padma Mahā Purāṇa, Uttara Khaṇḍa, Chapter 55