Solah Somvar Vrat Katha · सोलह सोमवार व्रत कथा

The priest's curse

Shiva and Parvati, travelling on earth, came to the city of Amaravati, where the king had built a beautiful temple of Shiva, and they stayed there. Parvati proposed a game of chausar (dice). The temple priest came in to worship, and Parvati asked him who would win. He said Shiva would; but Parvati won, and for his false prediction she cursed him with leprosy.

Some time later apsaras (heavenly maidens) came to the temple to worship. Seeing the priest's state, they asked what had happened, and taught him the vrat of sixteen Mondays. He kept it with faith, completed it, and was cured. When Shiva and Parvati came again and found him well, Parvati asked how, and he told her of the vrat.

From Parvati to the brahmin

Parvati then kept the vrat herself, and her son Kartikeya, who had been estranged from her, came back to her, devoted and obedient. When he asked why, she told him of the vrat; he kept it, and found a friend he had long been parted from. The friend, a brahmin, kept it in the hope of marriage. He travelled to another kingdom, where the king had vowed to marry his daughter to whomever a she-elephant garlanded; the elephant garlanded the brahmin, and he married the princess. When she learned the reason, she kept the vrat herself, wishing for a son, and was blessed with a son of every virtue. He in turn kept it wishing for a kingdom, and when the old king died, he came to the throne.

The queen who would not go to the temple

As king he went on keeping the vrat. One day he asked his queen to carry the offerings to the Shiva temple, but she sent them with her maids instead. When his worship was over, a voice from the sky told him to cast her out, or he would lose everything. He obeyed, and sent her away.

The queen wandered in misery. An old woman gave her work and set a bundle of thread on her head to carry to market, but a storm blew it away and the old woman drove her off. Everywhere she went misfortune followed her, until she reached the ashram of a holy man (gusain), who took her in. Even there, whatever she touched was spoiled. When he asked which deity she had offended, she told him she had disobeyed her husband and not gone to Shiva's worship. He prayed to Shiva for her and told her to keep the sixteen-Monday vrat.

She kept it, and by its power the king remembered her and sent messengers to find her. They found her at the ashram; the king came, asked the holy man's leave, and took her home. From then on they kept the vrat every year, lived happily by Shiva's grace, and at the end reached Shiva's abode.

Solah Somvar is a vow to fast and worship Shiva on sixteen consecutive Mondays, kept by those who pray for marriage, children, health or another long-held wish. Its katha is a chain of stories, each person learning the vrat from the one before: the cursed priest, Parvati, Kartikeya, his brahmin friend, the princess, her son, and finally the son's queen.

It is a folk katha with no single fixed text. The longer published versions agree closely on the chain of events, while shorter ones tell only its beginning; details such as the queen's wanderings vary. The retelling above keeps only what at least two of the versions linked below agree on.

The katha is heard at the Monday puja of Shiva on each of the sixteen Mondays; the vow is completed with an udyapan (closing worship), usually on the seventeenth Monday. Customs vary by family and region.