The Hartalika Teej vrat katha tells how Parvati, determined to have Shiva as her husband, was carried off into the forest by her friends when her father promised her to Vishnu, and how she won Shiva by worshipping a linga of sand through a day and a night of fasting. It is the story heard on Bhadrapada Shukla Tritiya, the day of that worship.
The Tritiya, how the day is fixed when the tithi is short, and the puja window are on the Hartalika Teej date page, with the panchang for your city for the day's tithi and nakshatra. This page is the story, told in our own words.
The story Shiva told Parvati
The vrat books open on Mount Kailash. Parvati asks Shiva which vrat is the most precious, the one by which she came to be his wife. Shiva smiles and tells her that she has forgotten her own story, and he tells it to her.
In her earlier life on earth Parvati was born as the daughter of Himavan, king of the mountains, and his queen Mainavati. From childhood her mind was turned towards Shiva alone. When she was still young she went to the slopes of the Himalaya beside the Ganga and began a penance so hard that her father could hardly bear to look at it. For a long time she lived on leaves; then she gave up even leaves, which is why she came to be called Aparna. In the heat she sat among fires, in the cold she stood in icy water, and in the rains she sat out under the open sky.
Himavan grieved for his daughter. One day the sage Narada came to his court with a proposal. Lord Vishnu, he said, had seen Parvati's devotion and would accept her as his bride. Himavan was overjoyed: what father could hope for a greater son-in-law? He gave his word at once, and Narada carried the news back.
When Parvati heard of it she was heartbroken. She had promised herself to Shiva and no one else. She told one of her closest friends everything. The friend did not argue or tell her to obey. She thought quickly, gathered another companion or two, and together they led Parvati away from the palace, deep into a forest where her father would not find her. This is the heart of the festival's name: Parvati was carried off, harat, by her friends, alika.
The sand linga
In a cave by a river in that forest, Parvati settled down to the last part of her penance. On the third day of the bright half of Bhadrapada, with the moon in Hasta nakshatra, she shaped a linga out of the sand of the riverbank. She bathed it, offered it flowers and leaves from the forest, and sang to Shiva. She took no food and no water that day, and when night came she did not sleep. Her friends sat with her, and all night long they sang and kept the lamp burning.
The steadiness of that worship reached Shiva. His seat on Kailash is said to have trembled. He came to the cave and stood before her and asked what she wished. Parvati asked only that he accept her as his wife. Shiva granted it and went back to his mountain.
The next morning Parvati gathered the puja offerings and immersed the sand linga in the river. She broke her fast with her friends. Just then Himavan, who had been searching the forests for her, arrived. He embraced his daughter and asked why she had left home. She told him plainly that she would come back only if he gave her to Shiva. Himavan agreed. In time Parvati and Shiva were married with all the rites, and the friends who had carried her off were the first to celebrate.
Shiva ends his telling by saying that whoever keeps this vrat on the same Tritiya, with the same faith, will have a married life as blessed as theirs.
Reading the story calmly
Some vrat booklets close the katha with a list of the hard rebirths said to await a woman who eats or sleeps on this day. Those lines belong to an old style of preaching that frightened people into keeping a vrat; they are not part of what Parvati's story teaches, and families today often leave them out when reading aloud. Parvati's own fast was a choice made out of love, and so is any fast kept in her memory. Women who are unwell, pregnant, older or on medicine keep the day with water or fruit, and nothing in the tradition counts that as less.
Other tellings
- The Shiva Purana. The great account of Parvati's tapas is in the Rudra Samhita of the Shiva Purana, where the sages test her and Shiva comes to her in disguise before revealing himself. The episode of the friends and the sand linga belongs to the Hartalika vrat books rather than to that text.
- Hartalika with her friend. In Maharashtra the goddess of the day is worshipped as Parvati together with her friend, and small figures of the two are set up side by side.
- Gauri's homecoming. In Karnataka the same Tritiya is Gauri Habba, and the story told is of Gauri coming home to her mother's house a day before her son Ganesha follows.
How the katha is heard
The story is told at the evening puja, when the women have set up the sand or clay images of Shiva, Parvati and Ganesh under a canopy of flowers. Women of a family or a neighbourhood sit together; one reads, the rest listen with a little rice in their hands. In many homes the katha is heard again in each watch of the night, between rounds of bhajans, so that the night is spent the way Parvati spent hers.
The full order of the puja, the phulera canopy, the jagran and the parana next morning are on the Hartalika Teej puja vidhi page.
What the story carries today
Hartalika is often called the hardest of the Teej fasts, but its story is not really about hardship. It is about a young woman who knew her own mind, and about the friends who took her side when her father had already given his word. Many women say this is the part they love most. Unmarried girls keep the day hoping for a partner they truly choose, and married women keep it for the life they have built.
The Shravan Tuesday fast for Gauri is told in the Mangla Gauri katha, and another story of a wife's steadiness is the Vat Savitri katha. For the evening puja, families often check the choghadiya for their city.