Where the stories come from
Two stories are told at the Jivitputrika (Jitiya) fast. The first, the sacrifice of Jimutavahana, is old and literary: Harsha wrote it as the Sanskrit play Nagananda in the 7th century, and Somadeva retold it in the Kathasaritsagara in the 11th. The version below follows Somadeva. The second, the story of the kite and the jackal (Chilho and Siyaro), is a folk vrat-katha told by mothers in Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Its details vary from village to village, but its core is the same everywhere. By custom the Jitiya puja is not complete until the stories have been heard.
Jimutavahana, the prince who gave himself away
Jimutaketu, king of the Vidyadharas, lived on the slopes of the Himalaya and owned a wish-fulfilling tree inherited from his ancestors. Childless, he asked the tree for a son, and it promised one who would be "a hero in giving, and kind to all creatures". That son was Jimutavahana. As crown prince he asked his father's leave to use the tree for others, and at his request it rained gold on the earth until no one was poor.
Envious relatives, seeing the kingdom's great treasure given away, prepared for war. Jimutavahana refused to win a throne by killing his own family. He left the kingdom and went with his parents to the Malaya mountain, where he lived in a hermitage and served his father. There he befriended the Siddha prince Mitravasu and married his sister Malayavati.
One day, walking by the sea, he saw a young man sent to a great slab of rock while his mother cried, "Alas, my son!" The young man was the Naga Shankhachuda. He explained that long ago Garuda, whose mother Vinata had been made a slave by the mother of the serpents, had won a boon from Vishnu that serpents would be his food. To save their race from being wiped out, the serpent king Vasuki had agreed to send Garuda one serpent every day to this rock. Today it was Shankhachuda's turn.
Jimutavahana resolved to save him. Shankhachuda refused to let another die in his place and went to pray at a Shiva shrine nearby. While he was gone, Jimutavahana sent his brother-in-law away on an excuse and lay down on the rock of execution himself. Garuda swooped down, seized him and began to eat him on a mountain peak, but flowers rained from heaven, and Garuda saw that his victim was not suffering but calm, even glad. When Garuda stopped, Jimutavahana asked why he had stopped while his hunger was not satisfied. Then Shankhachuda arrived, following the trail of blood, and cried out that he was the serpent meant for Garuda.
Ashamed that he had nearly eaten a prince who had given his life for another, Garuda wanted to burn himself in penance. Jimutavahana told him instead to vow never again to eat serpents, and to repent for all those he had already eaten. Garuda agreed. In Somadeva's telling the goddess Gauri, pleased by Malayavati's devotion, rained amrit on Jimutavahana and restored him, and Garuda brought amrit from heaven and sprinkled it along the shore, bringing back to life all the serpents of whom only bones remained.
The Jitiya vrat-katha tells the same story more simply: Jimutavahana, called a Gandharva prince, meets Shankhachuda's grieving mother and lies on the rock wrapped in her son's red cloth. In some tellings Garuda then promises that any mother who hears this story and keeps the fast will see her children saved even from the jaws of death. That is why Jimutavahana is worshipped on Jitiya, often as a small figure made of kusha grass.
Chilho and Siyaro: the kite and the jackal
A kite (chil) and a she-jackal (siyarin) lived as close friends in a forest, the kite in a tree and the jackal in the bushes beneath it, always sharing their food. One year they watched the women of a nearby village prepare for the Jitiya fast and decided to keep it too. The kite kept it faithfully, without food or water. The jackal could not bear the hunger, and in the night she secretly ate the flesh of a dead animal. The kite saw her do it.
In their next life both were born as sisters in the same human family, the kite as Shilavati and the jackal as Karpuravati. One married into a royal household, the other a Brahmin. Shilavati's seven sons all lived and grew up well, but each of Karpuravati's children died soon after birth. Consumed by jealousy, Karpuravati made her husband have the heads of Shilavati's seven sons cut off and sent to her sister wrapped in cloth. But that day Shilavati was keeping the Jitiya fast, and when she opened the bundle after her puja, the heads had turned to coconuts, and her sons were alive.
When Karpuravati asked how this could be, Shilavati told her of their previous life: the jackal had broken the Jitiya fast by eating meat, and the kite had kept it. Karpuravati repented and kept the fast faithfully herself, and in time her children lived too. In some villages women still shape small figures of the kite and the jackal from clay or cow-dung for the puja, and on the day before the fast they set out food for kites and jackals.
What the stories mean
The two stories carry the two halves of the fast. Jimutavahana's is about protecting someone else's child at any cost, which is what mothers ask for their own children on this day. The kite and the jackal's is about the fast itself: that it is kept with sincerity, and that breaking it in secret is no small thing. For the dates and the panchang decision for this year, see Jivitputrika Vrat 2026 by Jyotishacharya Harendra Chaubey.