Vrats in 2016

A lunar month is about 29.5 days, so a monthly observance falls twelve or thirteen times in a Gregorian year depending on where the boundaries land — and twenty-six Ekadashis instead of twenty-four in a year carrying an adhika masa.

Smarta and Vaishnava Ekadashi. The two traditions apply different tests to the same tithi. Smarta practice takes the day the Ekadashi tithi is running at sunrise — the udaya tithi — which is the day listed above. Vaishnava practice additionally requires the Ekadashi to be unmixed with Dashami at sunrise, and defers to the following day when it is not, so the two can fall a day apart.

We list the udaya (Smarta) day, because that is the one we can compute exactly, and we show each tithi's precise start and end on the daily panchang so you can apply the Vaishnava test yourself. We deliberately do not print a separate Vaishnava date: the threshold for “mixed with Dashami” is a convention we cannot source, and we would rather give you the exact times than a confident answer we can't stand behind. Where your family or temple follows a different reckoning, follow it.

See the annual festival calendar →