Jivitputrika Vrat (Jitiya Vrat) 2114

From the Kathasaritsagara

Jimutavahana was the son of King Jimutaketu, lord of the Vidyadharas on the Himalaya. His family owned a wish-fulfilling tree, and it was this tree that had granted the childless king his son. When Jimutavahana grew up, he asked his father's leave and used the tree to end the poverty of the world. The tree showered gold upon the earth.

His envious relatives then made ready for war to seize the throne. Jimutavahana would not fight his own kin. He gave up the kingdom and went with his father and mother to Mount Malaya. There he befriended Mitravasu, son of the Siddha king Vishvavasu, and married Mitravasu's sister, Malayavati.

One day, walking by the sea, Jimutavahana saw a young Naga named Shankhachuda being led to a rock by the shore while his mother wept. Shankhachuda explained why. Long ago Garuda had won the freedom of his mother Vinata, and Vishnu had granted him that the Nagas would be his food. To save the whole serpent world, the Naga king Vasuki had agreed to send one Naga to that rock each day for Garuda to eat. Today it was Shankhachuda's turn.

Jimutavahana offered to die in his place. Shankhachuda refused, saying a jewel should never be destroyed to save a piece of glass, and went to worship Shiva at Gokarna before his death. Jimutavahana sent Mitravasu away on an excuse and lay down on the rock himself. Garuda swooped down, carried him to a mountain peak and began to eat him. Flowers fell from the sky, and Garuda wondered at it.

Shankhachuda came back, saw blood on the rock, and followed the trail. Garuda, seeing that his victim showed no fear, had stopped eating and asked who he was. Then Shankhachuda cried out, "Stop, Garuda!" he cried. "He is not a Naga. I am the one meant for you." Garuda was filled with remorse and wanted to burn himself in fire. Jimutavahana told him instead to vow never again to eat the Nagas, and to repent for those he had eaten. Garuda accepted this and flew to heaven to fetch the nectar of immortality.

Before he returned, the goddess Gauri, pleased with the devotion of Jimutavahana's wife, came herself and rained nectar on him, and his body was made whole. Garuda brought the nectar and sprinkled it along the shore, and the Nagas whose bones lay there rose up alive. Jimutavahana's relatives came and bowed to him, and he returned home with his family and ruled long as emperor of the Vidyadharas.

Another story

This is the katha traditionally told by families who keep Jitiya; no Purana source was found for it.

In a forest near the Narmada river lived a kite and a she-jackal. They watched women keeping the Jitiya vrata and decided to keep it too. During the fast the jackal grew so hungry that she secretly ate. The kite kept the vrata with full faith to the end.

In time the two were born again as human sisters. The children of the sister who had once been the jackal died soon after birth, while the children of the sister who had kept the fast lived. When harm was plotted against those children, the power of the vrata saved them. At last the truth of their past life was told, and it became clear why one mother's children lived and the other's did not.