Solah Somvar Vrat Katha

Traditionally the Solah Somvar vrat begins on the first Monday of the month of Shravan. Each Monday, Shiv and Parvati are worshipped with bel leaves and water, a fast is kept and the katha is heard. On the seventeenth Monday comes the udyapan: a churma of wheat flour, ghee and jaggery is made and divided into three parts, one for the Lord, one to share, and one for oneself.

Once Shiv and Parvati came to the Shiv temple of a city and began playing chaupar, a game of dice, to pass the time. Just then the temple priest arrived. Parvati asked him, 'Tell me, who will win?' Without thinking, the priest said, 'Mahadev.' But Parvati won the game. Because he had spoken wrongly and without thought, she cursed the priest with leprosy.

The priest was deeply unhappy. Some time later, apsaras from heaven came to that temple. Hearing his sorrow, they told him to keep the vrat of sixteen Mondays and explained how. The priest kept the sixteen Monday fasts with full devotion, and as the katha says, he became healthy again.

When Shiv and Parvati came there again, Parvati saw the priest well and asked the reason. He told her about the vrat. In those days Parvati's son Kartikeya had gone far away, upset about something. Parvati kept this same vrat, and Kartikeya came back to his mother. When he asked why his mind had changed, she told him about the vrat.

Kartikeya told a Brahmin friend who was far from home about the vrat. The friend kept it and travelled to another land. There, at a princess's swayamvar, the man around whose neck a she-elephant placed a garland would marry the princess. The elephant garlanded that Brahmin. Later the princess also kept the vrat. The katha goes on to say their son kept it with the same faith and became a king. So the vrat passed from one person to the next.