The king who kept his word
King Harishchandra of the solar dynasty, tested by the fierce Rishi Vishwamitra for a single spoken promise, gave away his entire kingdom, then his ancestral wealth, then his crown itself. When even these could not fulfil the promised dakshina, he sold his beloved queen Shaivya and their little son Rohitashva to a Brahmin's household, and himself into the service of a chandala of the Kashi cremation-ghat — the lowest position his birth could be reduced to.
The night at the cremation-ghat
For years Harishchandra lived as the chandala's servant, collecting the fee of a single cloth from each corpse brought for cremation. One night, in the storm and lightning of a monsoon midnight, a weeping woman came dragging the small body of her dead son. Harishchandra, holding to his master's word as fiercely as he had once held to Vishwamitra's, demanded the customary fee. The woman lifted her face into the lightning — and it was Shaivya. The child was Rohitashva, killed that evening by snakebite in the Brahmin's garden.
Truth held even here
Husband and wife recognised each other in one another's eyes and both fell silent. Shaivya offered the last piece of cloth she had — the one she was wearing — for the fee. Harishchandra, weeping without allowing tears to reach his voice, accepted it without lowering his master's rule. In that moment, when both were tested past every human limit and did not break, the very devas at Indra's court rose from their seats. Rishi Gautama descended to Harishchandra and spoke: 'Rajan, the Bhadrapada Krishna Ekadashi that dawns tomorrow is called Aja. Observe it. What dharma has taken for higher purpose, its punya will restore.'
The restoration
Harishchandra observed the vrat even in his chandala state — fasting the whole day, keeping jagran beside his dead son on the cremation-ghat with Vishnu Sahasranama, offering with tears the little Ganga jal his cracked lota still held. On Dwadashi morning the sky opened. Rohitashva sat up alive. Vishwamitra himself descended with the devas, dissolved every appearance of trial, and returned to Harishchandra his kingdom, his queen, his son, and the throne of Ayodhya — with the further grant that Aja Ekadashi thenceforth would be the supreme vrat among those that return what has been taken.
"Releases the vrati from past-life karma, from sorrow, and from everything unjustly taken. Prescribed after great personal loss — of kingdom, of family, of health, of dignity."