Satyanarayan Katha — Chapters 1 and 2

Traditionally the Satyanarayan vrat is kept on Purnima, on Sankranti, or on any auspicious day, often in the evening. Lord Vishnu is worshipped in his Satyanarayan form, a canopy is decorated with banana leaves, and prasad is made from wheat flour or semolina, ghee, milk, sugar and bananas. All five chapters of the katha are heard, the aarti is sung, and the prasad is shared with everyone.

Once, in the Naimisharanya forest, Shaunak and other sages asked Suta ji, 'In the Kali Yug, how can people end their suffering?' Suta ji said Narad ji had once asked Lord Vishnu the same question. Wandering the earth, Narad saw people surrounded by every kind of sorrow and went to Vishnu's realm. The Lord said that keeping the Satyanarayan vrat with devotion is traditionally believed to bring peace of mind and happiness.

In the second chapter Suta ji told who first kept this vrat. In the city of Kashi lived a very poor Brahmin who lived by begging. Seeing his state, the Lord himself came as an old Brahmin and taught him how to keep the Satyanarayan vrat. With whatever he received as alms, the Brahmin kept the vrat with devotion.

The katha says his poverty then ended, and he kept the vrat every month. One day, while he was doing the puja, a woodcutter came by, tired and thirsty. He asked what puja this was, and the Brahmin explained. The woodcutter thought, 'With the money I get for my wood today, I too will keep this vrat.'

That day his wood sold for twice the price. He bought bananas, ghee, milk, flour and jaggery, invited his family and neighbours, and had the katha read with love. As the katha says, his life too became happy. Suta ji says that in this vrat, feeling matters more than money: the poor Brahmin and the woodcutter worshipped with whatever they had.