The Kedara Gowri Vratam: How Gowri Became Half of Shiva – A Deepavali Amavasya Vow

While most homes spend the evening of Deepavali Amavasya lighting lamps and worshipping Goddess Lakshmi, some families keep a quieter vow on the same day. A kalasham is set up, a yellow thread with twenty-one knots is placed before it, and Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati are worshipped together as Kedareswara and Gowri. This is the Kedara Gowri vratam, known in many Telugu homes as the Kedareswara vratam, and its story is about one of the most beautiful ideas in Hindu thought: that Shiva and Shakti are never apart.

When it is kept

The vratam is observed on Ashwayuja Amavasya, the new-moon day of Deepavali, which closes the month of Ashwayuja; Karthika Masam begins the next day. Some families keep a longer form, observing the vow for twenty-one days so that it ends on Deepavali Amavasya, but most today observe the main day only. Your Telugu panchangam and your family elders will tell you which form your household follows.

The rest of the festival – Naraka Chaturdashi, the Lakshmi puja and the evening lamps – is described on our Deepavali page.

The story: how Gowri became half of Shiva

The legend of the vratam is traditionally associated with the Skanda Purana, and it is told in two closely related ways.

In the best-known telling, the sage Bhringi was so single-minded a devotee of Lord Shiva that he would worship Shiva alone. When he walked around the Lord in pradakshina at Kailasa, he would not include Goddess Parvati, who sat beside him. In another telling, it is Shiva's attendants, the pramatha ganas, who circle the Lord and leave out the Goddess. Either way, Parvati was hurt – not for her own honour, but because devotion that separated her from her Lord was incomplete.

She resolved never to be separated from Shiva again and sought the counsel of the sage Gautama. He taught her the Kedara vratam, which she kept with complete devotion for twenty-one days. Pleased, Lord Shiva gave her the left half of his body, and the two became one in the form of Ardhanarishvara, the Lord who is half woman. The vratam bears the name of Kedareswara, the Lord of Kedara, whose great Himalayan shrine is the Kedarnath Jyotirlinga.

The story is more than a tale of a wife's devotion. It is a teaching that Shiva without Shakti cannot be fully worshipped, and that the divine is complete only as a union. For this reason the vratam is often kept with prayers for harmony in married life and the well-being of the family.

How families keep it

Practices differ from family to family and region to region, and the first rule of this vratam, as of every nomu, is to follow your own family's tradition. A common pattern is:

1. Prepare the kalasham. A kalasham is set up on a bed of rice, as for other vratams, and Kedareswara and Gowri are invoked in it. Some families use a picture or a small Shiva Lingam instead.
2. The twenty-one-knot thread. A yellow thread (toram), smeared with turmeric and tied with twenty-one knots, is placed before the Lord and worshipped. The number recalls the twenty-one days of Parvati's vow.
3. Offerings in twenty-one. Many families offer items in sets of twenty-one – betel leaves, areca nuts, fruits and sweets – along with flowers and naivedyam.
4. Hearing the story. The vrata katha is read or told, as in every vratam.
5. Tying the thread. After the puja, the thread is tied on the wrist or upper arm of those who keep the vratam.
6. Fasting. Those who keep the vow usually fast until the puja is complete and then take prasadam. As always, elders, the unwell and pregnant women should not feel bound to fast.

In many families the vratam is a nomu – a vow received from elders and kept up year after year – and it is often observed together by the women of the household. In Tamil homes it is called Kedara Gowri nombu; in Kannada homes it is also widely kept; and Telugu communities, at home and abroad, observe it as the Kedareswara vratam, sometimes as a samoohika (collective) puja at the temple.

The vratam and the month that follows

The vratam falls on the very threshold of Karthika, the month most dear to Lord Shiva in the Telugu tradition. Families who keep it often carry its spirit straight into the month that begins the next morning – the dawn baths, the evening lamps and the Mondays of fasting described in our guide to the Karthika Somavaram vratam.

A closing thought

On a night when every doorstep is bright, the Kedara Gowri vratam points to a quieter light: the unity of the Lord and the Goddess, and of husband and wife, parent and child, within a home. The twenty-one knots on a yellow thread are a small thing to wear, but they carry a large prayer – that those we love should never be left out of our worship, or out of our lives. To read more about the Goddess, see our page on Parvathi Devi.