Jaya Ekadashi 2027: Date, Parana and the Magha Fortnight

Jaya Ekadashi, the Ekadashi of Magha’s bright fortnight, is kept on Wednesday, 17 February 2027. Unlike several Ekadashis of the year, this one leaves no room for two readings: exactly one sunrise falls inside the tithi, it is already hours old at the pre-dawn hour the Vaishnava calendars test, and the same is true in every city the site computes. What does need care is the end of the fast, because the Dwadashi that follows is over by the early afternoon of the 18th.

One Sunrise Inside the Tithi (जया एकादशी)

The Shukla Ekadashi begins at 20:19 on 16 February and ends at 17:32 on 17 February. Neither instant has a row in the generated festival tables; both are found with the site’s lunar code, which agrees with the DE421 tables to within 1 minute at the 86 tithi instants where the two can be compared.

Read against the New Delhi sunrises, the daily table prints Shukla Dashami on the morning of the 16th (06:59), Shukla Ekadashi on the 17th (06:58) and Shukla Dwadashi on the 18th (06:57). A Smarta almanac, which keeps the Ekadashi on the day whose sunrise falls in it, therefore has only one candidate. The tithi then closes 40 minutes before the 18:12 sunset on the 17th, so the evening of the fast already belongs to Dwadashi.

No Dashami at Arunodaya

Vaishnava calendars, following the Hari Bhakti Vilasa, ask a second question: is Dashami still running at arunodaya, the stretch of about 96 minutes before sunrise? If it is, they call the Ekadashi Dashami-viddha, “pierced” by the previous tithi, and move the fast to the next day. That cannot happen this time. The Ekadashi arrives on the previous evening, so by arunodaya on the 17th it will have been current for more than nine hours, and the Smarta and Vaishnava readings land on the same Wednesday.

The margins hold across the country. For all 38 cities in the site’s panchang, the sunrise times from its solar code put the Ekadashi’s start more than an hour after the 16th’s sunset, well ahead of the 17th’s arunodaya, and the Dwadashi’s end hours after the 18th’s sunrise. There is no city on that list where the day is close to the line.

A Whole Dashami Day

The vrat manuals that ask for one plain meal on Dashami, eaten before sunset, are easy to follow this year. The Ekadashi opens more than two hours after the 18:11 sunset on Tuesday the 16th, so the whole of that day’s daylight is Dashami and an ordinary early supper falls before the fast in any reckoning.

Parana on Thursday Morning, Before Dwadashi Ends (पारण)

Dwadashi runs from 17:32 on the 17th to 14:28 on 18 February, by the same computation. Its first quarter, the Hari Vasara that panchangs printing a parana time keep the fast through, is spent before midnight on the 17th, long before Thursday’s sunrise at 06:57. The constraint that matters is the other end. The vrat manuals ask that the fast be broken while Dwadashi is still current, and on the 18th it closes in the early afternoon, more than three hours before sunset. A morning parana, after sunrise and well before 14:28, meets both conditions with room to spare; leaving it to the evening would not. The sunrise and sunset clocks quoted here are New Delhi’s, and the panchang calculator keeps to that one place too; anyone breaking the fast in another city will find that city’s sunrise and sunset on the city panchang pages.

Magha in Both Calendars

The dark-fortnight Ekadashis carry two month names, one a month ahead of the other, because north Indian purnimanta calendars run a month from full moon to full moon and the amanta calendars of the west and south run it from new moon to new moon. A bright-fortnight Ekadashi carries only one. The lunation opens with the new moon at 21:26 on 6 February, with the Sun in sidereal Capricorn, and the Sun does not move on into Aquarius until 13 February. The amanta reckoning names a lunation by the solar sign it opens in, and a lunation that opens with the Sun in Capricorn is Magha; its bright half runs to the full moon at 04:53 on 21 February. The purnimanta Magha begins the day after Paush Purnima on 22 January and ends at that same full moon, so this fortnight is its second half. Both calendars therefore call the Ekadashi Magha Shukla Ekadashi.

The festival tables agree. The site’s festival rules file Vasant Panchami as the fifth and Ratha Saptami as the seventh of Magha’s bright half, and the 2027 table puts them on Thursday 11 February and Saturday 13 February. Jaya Ekadashi comes six days after Vasant Panchami in the same fortnight, and the Purnima that closes it opens three days later; that full moon, which no New Delhi sunrise holds, is the subject of the Magh Purnima 2027 page.

The Story the Padma Purana Tells

The Padma Purana attaches a story to this Ekadashi. In its telling, the gandharva Malyavan and the apsara Pushpavati, performing in Indra’s court, are so taken with each other that the song and the dance falter; Indra curses them to live as pishachas in the Himalaya. Cold and miserable, they eat nothing one day and stay awake through the night, not knowing that the day is the Magha Shukla Ekadashi, and in the Purana’s account the fast, kept without intent, returns them to their own form and to Indra’s heaven. The Purana gives the vrat its name and its fruit through that ending. This page reports the story as the Purana’s and makes no claim about what keeping the fast does.

Quick Reference

• Fast: Wednesday 17 February 2027, Smarta and Vaishnava alike
• Ekadashi tithi (computed): 20:19 on 16 February to 17:32 on 17 February
• Dashami meal: the daylight of 16 February is entirely Dashami
• Parana: Thursday 18 February 2027, after sunrise (06:57) and before Dwadashi ends at 14:28
• Sunrise and sunset on 17 February (New Delhi): 06:58 and 18:12; nakshatra at sunrise Ardra
• Month: Magha Shukla in both amanta and purnimanta calendars

Every Ekadashi of the year, with the cases where the two readings part company, is set out in the Ekadashi 2027 list; the Saphala Ekadashi 2027 page works through a harder case, one whose Dashami day is cut short. The 2027 festival calendar and the festival pages carry the rest of the year. In Hindi: जया एकादशी 2027: तारीख, पारण और माघ का शुक्ल पक्ष.