Somvar Vrat Katha · सोमवार व्रत कथा

A wealthy merchant, respected far and wide, had everything except a son, and worried about who would carry on after him. Wishing for a son, he kept the fast and worship of Shiva every Monday, and in the evening lit a lamp of ghee before Shiva at the temple.

Seeing his devotion, Parvati asked Shiva to grant his wish. Shiva replied that every being receives the fruit of its own deeds. But Parvati asked again and again, and at last Shiva granted the merchant a son, saying the boy would live only until the age of sixteen. That night Shiva appeared to the merchant in a dream and told him both the boon and the boy's short life.

The merchant went on keeping the Monday fast. A beautiful son was born, but the merchant could not fully rejoice, knowing the secret. When the boy was twelve, he sent him with the boy's maternal uncle to study in Varanasi. Wherever they stopped on the way, they performed a yajna and fed brahmins.

On the way they reached a city where the king's daughter was to be married. The groom was blind in one eye, and his father, fearing disgrace, asked the uncle to let the merchant's son stand in as the groom, promising him money. The uncle agreed, and the boy was married to the princess. But the boy was honest: before parting, he wrote on the princess's veil that she had been married to him, that he was going to Varanasi to study, and that the man she was being sent with was blind in one eye. Reading it, the princess refused to go, and the king kept her in the palace.

The boy studied in Varanasi. When he turned sixteen, he held a yajna, fed brahmins and gave gifts; that night, as Shiva had foretold, he died in his sleep. In the morning his uncle wept over him. Shiva and Parvati, passing unseen, heard the weeping, and Parvati could not bear it. Shiva said this was the merchant's son whose life he had limited to sixteen years, but at Parvati's plea he gave the boy life again, and he sat up at once.

Their studies done, the two set out for home and came again to the city of the wedding. The king recognised the boy and sent the princess with him, with much wealth. At home, the merchant and his wife had vowed to give up their lives if they heard their son had died; instead they heard he was returning alive and married, and their joy knew no bounds. That night Shiva told the merchant in a dream that, pleased by his Monday fasts and his hearing of the katha, he had granted his son a long life.

The katha ends by saying that whoever keeps the Monday fast and hears this story has their wishes fulfilled.

This is the katha read during the Monday (Somvar) vrat of Shiva, and especially on the Mondays of Shravana (Sawan). It is a folk katha with no single fixed text; the published versions agree on the story, though some add names for the characters. The retelling above keeps only what at least two of the versions linked below agree on. For the sixteen-Monday vow there is a separate katha, the Solah Somvar Vrat Katha.

The katha is read or heard on Mondays during the worship of Shiva, as part of the Monday vrat. Customs vary by family and region.