[Advaita-l] Ekadashi Questions

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 1:10 AM, Siva Senani Nori <sivasenani at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Dear Sri Sthanunathan
>
> Nirnaya Sindhu, also called Kala Nirnayah, written in the 17th century by
> Sri Kamalakara Bhatta is a compendium of such issues. There is a later
> derivative book called Dharma Sindhu by Kasinatha Upadhyaya which deals with
> it. We are smarta Brahmins from Vengi (the region between Krishna and
> Godavari near the Eastern coast) in AP, and in all such matters the word of
> Dhrama Sindhu is taken as binding in our families.
>
> The Nirnaya Sagar edition of the Nirnaya Sindhu in Devanagari characters is
> available in the Digital Library of India at
> http://dli.iiit.ac.in/cgi-bin/Browse/scripts/use_scripts/advnew/metainfo.cgi?&barcode=2020010008716.
> There is also a verion in Telugu characters with translation into Telugu
> available at archive.org, but that might not be relevant to most. Anyway
> it is only a simple Google search away.
>
> In the very beginning these books - both the Nirynaya Sindhu and Dharma
> Sindhu - haves a lengthy discourse on EkaadaSi - how to determine ekaadaSi,
> what are the vratas to be followed, who should follow it, what are the rules
> for Vaishnavas, what are the rules for smaartas etc.
>
> Broadly speaking tithis are Suddha or viddha (that is they have a vedha, an
> overlapping, by some other tithi). Vaishnavas reckon the vedha based on
> Arunodaya (4 ghadiyas - a ghadiya is 24 minutes; 60 ghadiyas make a day -
> before sunrise, suryodaya) and smaartas based on Suryodaya; depending on the
> kind of vedha or absence thereof, and of the type of adhikya
> (another aspects of tithi, too involved to be discussed here) there are
> eighteen types of ekadaSi for Vaishnavas and Smartas each. I also noticed
> two types of Vaishnavas - Suddha and sarva - but since this is not a
> Vaishnava forum and since most of us here are not intimately aware of
> divisions amongst them, we will let that be.
>
> For each of these types of ekadaSi, the rules differ slightly. The details
> would not be of interest to the readers of that list and so are skipped. If
> you insist, we can correspond privately on that.
>

Very informative and please do post it, it would be of interest to many.

Thanks!

Rama