Aja Ekadashi is the Ekadashi of the dark half of Bhadrapada (Shravana in the amanta reckoning), a few days after Janmashtami, and its katha is the end of the trial of King Harishchandra. The king who never broke his word lost everything, and on this Ekadashi, kept on a sage's advice at a cremation ground, he got it back.
To see when the next Aja Ekadashi falls, with the Smarta and Vaishnava days and the parana window, open the Ekadashi dates page and choose the day; each day's page gives its parana time for your city. Here is the story.
The katha
Yudhishthira said, "Janardana, tell me about the Ekadashi in the dark half of Bhadrapada. What is its name, and how is it kept?"
Krishna said, "Its name is Aja. It clears away a person's faults, and simply hearing of it is said to be a blessing. Listen to the story of Harishchandra."
In an earlier age there lived a king named Harishchandra, ruler of Ayodhya and of the whole earth. His fame rested on one thing: he never spoke a false word and never went back on a promise. Even the gods talked about it.
Fate, in the form of a long and hard test, came to him. In a dream, or by a gift he had pledged to a sage, the king gave away his entire kingdom. A gift once given cannot be taken back, so he left his palace with his queen and their young son, owning nothing. Still a promised fee remained to be paid. To pay it he sold his wife and son into service in a brahmin's household, and then sold himself to a man who kept the cremation ground at Kashi.
So the emperor of the world became a servant among the funeral pyres. He carried wood, kept the fires going, and collected the fee that his master charged for every cremation. He was given rough cloth to wear and plain food to eat. Year after year he did this work without complaint, because he had given his word. But in the quiet hours he would sit and ask himself, "What can I do? How will this end?"
One day, as he sat thinking this, the sage Gautama came walking past. Harishchandra recognised a holy man, rose, bowed, and told him his whole story: the kingdom, the queen, the boy, the ground where he now worked.
Gautama listened with great pity. Then he said, "King, do not lose heart. In a few days comes the Ekadashi of the dark half of Bhadrapada, called Aja. Keep it fully. Fast through the day, stay awake through the night with the name of Hari, and your long trouble will come to its end. It is good fortune that this day is so near." Having said this, the sage went on his way.
Harishchandra did exactly as he was told. When the day came he fasted, worshipped Vishnu as best a servant at a cremation ground could, and sat awake all night remembering God. That night the account of his sufferings was closed.
In the morning there was a sound of drums in the sky and flowers fell around him. The gods appeared before him, Brahma and Indra among them, and told him his trial was complete. His son, whom he had thought lost, stood before him alive. His queen, dressed again as a queen, stood beside the boy. The kingdom was returned to him, and he ruled for many years. At the end of his life he went to heaven with his family and his people.
Krishna said, "This is the power of Aja Ekadashi. Whoever keeps it, and whoever hears this story, is lifted out of trouble as Harishchandra was."
Reading the story calmly
This is a hard story, with a sold wife and child, a cremation ground and a lost son. In the larger telling these were tests, arranged so that the world could see one man's truthfulness, and none of them was the end. The Ekadashi does not ask anyone to suffer like this. It speaks to people going through a long difficulty and tells them, gently, that difficulty has an end.
Other tellings
The full Harishchandra story, told in the Markandeya Purana and loved in North Indian folk theatre, has the sage Vishvamitra as the one who tests the king, and a famous scene where the queen, Taramati, brings their son to the very cremation ground her husband guards and he must still ask her for the fee. The Aja mahatmya assumes that larger story and adds its own ending: the fast that closed the trial.
What the day is kept for
People keep Aja Ekadashi to hold on to honesty in a hard season, and to pray that a long difficulty, a debt, an illness in the house, a separation, may come to its end. The text says the fast removes past faults and brings a person to Vishnu's world; families take it as the hope the story gives.
How it is kept
The fast follows the usual Ekadashi order, but many families mark this one with the gift that its other name, Annada, suggests: grain, a meal or flour for someone who needs it. Coming so soon after Janmashtami, it is often kept with Krishna's worship continued from that festival. Some people make a quiet resolution about truthfulness on this day. The full steps are on the Ekadashi puja vidhi page.
Neighbouring Ekadashis
Before Aja comes Shravana Putrada Ekadashi, and after it Parsva Ekadashi, when Vishnu turns in his sleep. The panchang shows the tithi for any day in your city.