The Sharad Purnima vrat katha heard in most North Indian homes is the story of a sahukar's two daughters: the elder kept her Purnima fasts with complete care, while the younger always left them half done, and the story shows how the younger learned the worth of a vow kept fully. Alongside it many families remember Lakshmi's question, "ko jagarti?" (who is awake?), and the Raas of Krishna on this brightest moonlit night of autumn.
The date of the full moon, moonrise in your city and the rule for choosing the night are on the Sharad Purnima date page, and the moon's rising time for any city is on moonrise by city. This page holds only the stories, told in our own words.
The story of the sahukar's two daughters
Long ago a wealthy sahukar, a moneylender and merchant, lived in a town with his wife and two daughters. Both girls had been taught by their mother to keep the fast of every Purnima, the full moon day, and both did so from childhood.
The two sisters were alike in face but not in temperament. The elder took up each fast with a settled mind. She bathed early, kept the day quietly, waited for the moon in the evening, offered it water and only then ate. The younger began just as willingly, but by afternoon her resolve would loosen. She would eat something small, or end the fast before the moon was up, or let the puja slip because a guest had come. She meant no disrespect; she simply never carried the vow all the way through.
In time both were married into good families. The elder's household grew; her children were healthy and her home was content. The younger, too, became a mother, but each child she bore did not live long. Her grief was deep, and her family went from one learned man to another asking why.
At last an old pandit, after listening to her whole story, asked her gently about her fasts. When she told him how she kept them, he said that a vow half kept is like a lamp half lit, and advised her to keep the Purnima fast fully, with patience, from the morning bath to the offering to the moon. She took his words to heart and from then on did not break a single fast midway.
In due course she gave birth to a son. Yet this child too seemed to slip away soon after birth. Heartbroken but steady, she laid the baby on a low wooden seat, the pidha, and drew a cloth over him. Then she sent for her elder sister.
When the elder sister arrived, the younger offered her that same seat. As the elder began to sit, the edge of her garment brushed the little covered form, and at once the child stirred and began to cry. The elder sister started back in alarm and said, "What were you doing? I nearly sat on your baby, and you would have blamed me." The younger sister folded her hands and told her everything: the child had seemed lost, and she had hoped that the touch of a sister whose Purnima fasts had always been complete would bring him back. And so it had.
The story ends with the younger sister going through the town telling every woman she met to keep the Purnima fast fully and with a calm heart, and with the tradition that this fast reached its fullest on the full moon of Ashvin, when the moon itself is said to be complete in all sixteen kalas.
Reading the story calmly
This is a folk tale, and like many vrat kathas it carries a hard motif: the loss of children, and their return through a vow. It is not a statement that a child's health depends on whether a mother ate before moonrise, and no family should read it that way. What the women who tell it usually draw out is quieter: the difference between doing a thing with half a mind and doing it with one's whole heart, and the love between two sisters, one of whom lends her steadiness to the other. Women who are pregnant, unwell or older keep the fast with water and fruit, or not at all, and the tradition has always allowed for that.
Lakshmi's question: ko jagarti
In Bengal, Odisha, Assam, Mithila and in Maharashtra and Gujarat, the full moon of Ashvin is the night of Kojagari or Kojagiri. The name is drawn from a question. On this night, it is told, Lakshmi comes down to earth and walks from house to house in the moonlight, asking, "Who is awake?"
Where the house is dark and everyone sleeps, she passes on. Where a lamp is burning, the courtyard is swept, and someone sits awake waiting for her with a calm mind, she enters and blesses that home with plenty for the year ahead.
A story often told with it concerns a poor Brahmin family. The husband had drifted into idleness, and the wife, tired of their want, persuaded him to keep the Kojagari vigil. He cleaned the house, lit a lamp, offered what little they had to Lakshmi, and sat up through the night, keeping himself awake with songs and games. Lakshmi found him awake, and their fortunes turned. In some tellings the story is about a king rather than a poor man; the point is the same: the open door and the waking heart.
The Raas on the full moon of autumn
For devotees of Krishna, Sharad Purnima is above all the night of the Maharaas. The Bhagavata Purana tells how, as the autumn moon rose full over Vrindavan, Krishna played his flute on the bank of the Yamuna. The gopis heard it in their homes and left whatever they were doing to go to him. In the moonlit grove he danced with them in a great circle, and each gopi felt that Krishna was beside her alone.
Devotional teachers read the Raas as the meeting of the soul with the divine, not as an ordinary dance. In Braj this night is kept with Raas Leela performances, and in many temples the deities are dressed in white to match the moonlight.
How the katha is heard
Women who keep the Purnima fast usually sit together in the evening, or alone in the puja corner, after the lamp is lit and before the moon is offered water. An elder tells the story of the two sisters, and the listeners hold a few grains of rice or wheat, which are later offered with the water to the moon. In homes that keep Kojagari, the story of Lakshmi's question is told during the night vigil. In Krishna temples the Raas is told through song and drama rather than read aloud.
The full order of the night, from the Lakshmi puja to the kheer in the moonlight, is on the Sharad Purnima puja vidhi page.
What the story carries today
For many families Sharad Purnima is simply a lovely evening: the first cool night after the rains, kheer cooling on the terrace, everyone sitting up late under a very bright moon. The katha gives that evening a thread of meaning. The two sisters ask whether we finish what we begin, the Kojagari question asks whether we are awake to what is good, and the Raas speaks of joy freely given.
The monthly full moon worship that many homes keep is told on the Satyanarayan katha page, and the fast that follows in a few days for married women in the north is Karwa Chauth. To plan the evening, check the panchang for your city and the moonrise time.