The Jitiya vrat katha is the story of Jimutavahana, a Vidyadhara prince who lay down on Garuda's rock in place of a frightened naga boy, and whose kindness changed Garuda's heart. Alongside it, mothers tell the folk tale of the kite and the jackal, two friends who kept the Jitiya fast together, one with her whole heart and one only on the surface.
The day of the fast, nahay-khay before it and the morning of parana are on the Jitiya date page, and the Ashtami's start and end for your city can be read on the panchang. This page is the story itself, told in our own words.
The story of Jimutavahana
Long ago the Vidyadharas, the sky-dwelling people of the old stories, had a king called Jimutaketu. His son, Jimutavahana, was gentle from childhood. He gave away what he had as easily as other princes collected things, and when he came of age he cared less for ruling than for serving his ageing parents. In time he handed over the kingdom to his kinsmen and went with his father and mother to live simply in the forests of the Malaya hills.
There he married Malayavati, a princess of that land, and for a while his life was quiet and content. One day, wandering further than usual, he came near the sea and heard a woman weeping. She was a naga mother, one of the serpent people, and she sat beside her son, holding him as though she would never let go.
Jimutavahana asked what had happened. She told him that Garuda, the great bird who carries Vishnu, had long been at war with the nagas. To stop him from destroying them all, the nagas had agreed to send him one of their own each day, to be left on a flat rock by the shore. Today it was her son's turn. His name was Shankhachuda, and he was her only child.
The prince did not think for long. He told the mother to take her son home; he would go to the rock instead. Shankhachuda refused at first, for he did not want another to die for him, and he went off to pray at a nearby shrine before the hour came. While he was gone, Jimutavahana wrapped himself in the red cloth that marked the one chosen for Garuda, and lay down on the stone.
Garuda came down out of the sky, seized him and carried him to a mountain peak. But as he began, he noticed something strange. The one in his claws did not struggle or cry out. He lay calm, almost content, as though he were giving a gift. Garuda stopped and asked him who he was, for he was plainly no naga.
Just then Shankhachuda came running up the mountain, calling out that the bird had taken the wrong one. Garuda looked from one to the other and understood: this stranger had offered his own body so that a mother would not lose her son.
Garuda was ashamed. He asked Jimutavahana what he could do to make amends. The prince asked only that Garuda stop taking the lives of the nagas. Garuda gave his word, and in most tellings he went further: he brought amrita, the nectar of the gods, healed Jimutavahana's wounds and restored the nagas he had taken before. The prince went home to his family, and the naga mother had her son again.
That is why, on Jitiya, mothers worship Jimutavahana. He is remembered as the one who stood between a child and harm when he did not have to, and the vow takes its name, Jivitputrika, from the wish for living, thriving children.
The kite and the jackal
The second story is a village tale. On the bank of a river stood a great tree. A kite (cheel) lived in its branches, and a she-jackal (siyarin) lived in a hollow among its roots. The two were close friends.
One year, as Ashtami came, they watched the women of the nearby village prepare for Jitiya: bathing, cooking the nahay-khay meal, then giving up food and water for the day and night. The friends decided to keep the fast too. They promised each other they would take nothing until the morning.
The kite kept her promise. Through the long day and longer night she sat quietly on her branch. The jackal grew hungry as the dark came on. When she thought no one was looking she slipped away to the riverbank, ate what she found there, and came back as though nothing had happened.
In their next lives, the story says, the two were born as sisters in a merchant's house. The elder, who had been the kite, was named Sheelvati in many tellings; the younger, who had been the jackal, was Kapurvati. Sheelvati married a minister's son and her children grew up healthy around her. Kapurvati married into the royal family, but her little ones did not survive infancy. Grief turned into jealousy, and she plotted against her sister's sons. The plot came to nothing: in the story the boys came home safe, protected, as the tellers say, by Jimutavahana himself.
At last Sheelvati remembered their former lives. She took her sister to the old tree by the river and told her of the fast they had once kept together, and of the night the jackal had eaten in secret. Kapurvati understood, and wept, and in the gentler tellings the sisters were reconciled and the younger kept Jitiya faithfully from then on.
Reading the story calmly
This is a folk tale, and it uses the oldest fear a mother has to make its point. It does not mean that a child's health depends on what a mother eats on one day, and no infant has ever been harmed by a mother drinking water during a fast. What the story honours is keeping one's word, and it ends in recognition and reconciliation, not punishment. Families have always let pregnant, nursing, unwell and older mothers keep a lighter form of Jitiya, and a doctor's advice comes before any custom.
Other tellings
- The frame. Some booklets open with Shiva telling the story to Parvati; others have a sage telling it to a gathering of women. The details of the frame vary from village to village.
- Jimutavahana's wife. In Harsha's Sanskrit play Nagananda, Malayavati is given a large part; in the vrat telling she is usually only mentioned.
- The ending of the sisters. In some villages the younger sister dies of remorse after recalling her past; in many others she is forgiven. We have followed the gentler ending, which is also widely told.
How the katha is heard
On the evening of the main day the mothers of a household or a lane sit together around a small pond or pit dug in the courtyard, or around a low platform. The kusha figure of Jimutavahana is placed in the middle, with clay or cow-dung figures of the kite and the jackal nearby. An elder tells both stories, and the younger women listen holding flowers or rice. In many homes the red-yellow jitiya thread is tied after the katha. The full order of the three days is on the Jitiya puja vidhi page.
What the story carries today
For most mothers who keep it, Jitiya is the hardest fast of the year, and the story gives the hunger a shape. Jimutavahana is a strange hero for a mothers' festival, a young man who was nobody's parent, but that is the point: he cared for another woman's son as though he were his own. Many mothers now keep the vow for daughters and sons alike.
Later in the season, mothers in the north keep Ahoi Ashtami for their children, and the same eastern households soon prepare for Chhath. If the family likes to begin the evening puja at a good hour, the choghadiya for your city is a quick guide.