As the Bhavishya Purana tells it
Bhavishya Purana, Uttara Parva 137 · 2 min read
After the great war was over, Yudhishthira was king, and he asked Krishna to teach him the rites that keep a kingdom safe through the year. Krishna told him of many, and when he came to the full moon of Shravana he told him a story.
Long ago, he said, the gods and the demons fought, and this time the gods were winning. The demons were driven back again and again, until their king Bali led what was left of them to their teacher, the sage Shukra.
"We are beaten every time we meet them," said Bali. "Indra fights as if no weapon can touch him. Tell us what has happened."
Shukra was quiet for a while. Then he said, "Do not grieve, king of the demons. Winning and losing are only the turns of time. But you cannot win now, and you should not try. Indra's wife Shachi has tied a raksha on his wrist, a thread of protection, and while it holds he cannot be beaten."
"Then what are we to do?" said Bali.
"Make friends with Indra," said Shukra. "Wait one year. The power of the thread lasts for a year, and no longer. When the year is over, your turn will come again."
The demons listened, made their peace, and waited.
"That is what the raksha can do," said Krishna to Yudhishthira. "It gives victory, and health, and sons, and wealth. This is how to keep it."
On the full moon of Shravana, he said, the king should rise early and offer water to his ancestors. In the afternoon a small bundle is made. Grains of unbroken rice, white mustard seed, a little gold, blades of durva grass and sandalwood are wrapped in a piece of cotton or silk and tied shut, and the bundle is set in a copper pot and worshipped.
The courtyard is smeared with cow dung and a pattern drawn on it, and a low seat is set in the middle. The king sits there with his ministers. The women whose husbands are living and the Brahmins worship him, and then the family priest ties the bundle on his right wrist, saying the verse.
"I tie on you the thread that was tied on the mighty Bali, king of the demons," says the priest. "Hold fast, raksha. Do not slip. Do not slip."
Then the king gives the priest clothes and food and gifts. "All four orders of people should keep it," said Krishna. "Whoever does, lives in happiness all through the year."
As the households tell it: the twelve-year war
North India · from the Vratraj · 1 min read
Other tellers make it a harder war, and the gods the losers. For twelve years the gods and the demons fought, and at the end of it the demons had taken heaven, and with it the three worlds. Indra, the king of the gods, sat in the ruins of his city with nowhere left to go.
He went to Brihaspati, the teacher of the gods, and asked him what was left to try. Brihaspati told him of a rite of protection, the raksha vidhana, and taught him the verse that goes with it.
On the full moon of Shravana, Brihaspati performed the rite. A small bundle was filled and made strong with the verse. When the worship was over, Shachi, Indra's queen, took the bundle and tied it on her husband's right wrist with her own hands.
Indra went back to war wearing it. Nothing the demons threw at him found its mark, and in a short time he had driven them out of heaven and taken back his kingdom.
In some homes the story is told a little differently. It is not Brihaspati who gives Shachi the thread but Vishnu, who hands her a band of cotton and tells her to tie it on her husband. Either way, the queen ties it, and the king comes home.
That is why, the households say, the thread is tied on the full moon of Shravana, for the one who goes out to face the world, by the one who stays and wishes them safe.