hindu-devotional-texts/src/kathas/SOURCES.md

Hand-curated, typed, authoritative Hindu devotional content — aartis, chalisas, kathas, stotras, mantras, ashtottaras & sahasranamas, Vedic suktas, daily prayers, puja vidhi, Navratri, tirthas, the festival/ekadashi calendar, and full scriptures (Bhagavad

# `kathas/` — sources & accuracy notes

This file records what every **researched** katha in the `kathas/` module was
cross-validated against, the disagreements found between sources, and — most
importantly — the **soft spots**: facts that could *not* be confidently
corroborated. Read the soft-spots section for a katha before its content ships.

## Posture

The `kathas/` module reconciles the same way the `puja/` and `navratri/`
modules did, against the repo's standing rule (PLAN.md Conventions) that
"AI-generated content is forbidden — every item hand-verified against canonical
traditional text by someone who can read Devanagari."

- The `satyanarayan` katha (the module's first, marked `verified`) was
  hand-typed from a canonical text by the repo owner. It is **not** covered by
  this file.
- The remaining Phase 3 kathas recorded here are **researched and authored**
  from trusted published sources, with the repo owner's (Ishank's) **explicit
  authorization** for researched authoring of the Phase 3 kathas.
- Every factual claim is cross-validated against ≥2 independent trusted sources
  where possible. Where only one trusted source carries a claim, it is flagged.
- Where sources disagree, the most widely-attested form — or, where the repo's
  designated primary source is decisive, that form — is used in the content,
  and the disagreement is recorded here.
- A fact that cannot be corroborated is **omitted** from the content and listed
  under "Soft spots" — never guessed or filled from a single low-quality page.
- The authored content is **provisional**. Each researched katha is shipped at
  status `draft` in the PLAN.md coverage tracker — not `verified`. It awaits
  Ishank's human verification against printed canonical texts (Gita Press
  vrat-katha editions). Until that review lands, treat the prose, the proper
  names, and the procedure as researched-but-unverified.
- ~~Following the `satyanarayan` template, the katha narratives are authored as
  English prose (`KathaParagraph.english` only); the only Devanagari is in the
  bilingual titles and a few `samagri` item names.~~ **Revised 2026-05-28:** all
  6 shipped kathas now carry parallel Hindi (`KathaParagraph.hindi`) per
  paragraph — see the Hindi-pass record below. `about` remains empty, matching
  the original template.
- **No change was made to the `Katha` schema.** It carries no `source` or
  `reviewPending` field by design; this file is the module's accuracy record,
  standing in for the per-item PR notes the hand-typed categories use.

## Trusted sources

Mirroring the `puja/` and `navratri/` precedent, the trusted-source set is:

- **DP** — **Drik Panchang** festival pages (English, and the `?lang=hi` Hindi
  pages) — the repo's established primary structured source for vrat content.
  Per-katha pages are cited below.
- **WIKI** — Wikipedia — used for framing and cross-checks, **not** as a primary.
- **BRIT** — Encyclopædia Britannica — an independent encyclopedic cross-check.
- **GP** — Gita Press (Gorakhpur) vrat-katha editions are the intended
  verification reference, named where relevant. No Gita Press text was fetched
  in the authoring session; corroboration against a printed Gita Press edition
  is the verification step still owed — see each katha's soft spots.

SEO content farms, astrology blogs, and AI-generated sites were avoided. Hindi
news-portal and aggregator retellings were read only to gauge how widely a
detail is told; they are **not** counted as trusted corroboration.

---

## `karva-chauth` — Shri Karva Chauth Vrat Katha

**Pages consulted.**

- DP — "Karwa Chauth Vrat Katha | Legends of Karwa Chauth" (English +
  `?lang=hi` Hindi); the "Karwa Chauth | Karaka Chaturthi" info page; "Karwa
  Chauth Puja Vidhi" (English + Hindi).
- WIKI — "Karva Chauth".
- BRIT — "Karva Chauth".
- One devotional-organisation account (Jagadguru Kripaluji Yog, jkyog.org) was
  read as a further cross-check on the legends; treated as supporting, not
  primary.

**Deity.** Omitted — Karva Chauth is a vrat not tied to a single deity (PLAN.md
and `types.ts` both name it as *the* example of this). Its puja worships
Parvati as Gaur Mata / Chauth Mata, with Shiva, Kartikeya, and Ganesha, and
offers argha to the moon.

**Chapters.** Two: the story of Veervati (Pratham Adhyay) — the principal
recited katha — and the story of Karva (Dwitiya Adhyay) — the festival's
namesake legend. Both are corroborated across ≥2 trusted sources. The
Mahabharata (Draupadi) and Savitri–Satyavan legends were **not** included —
see Soft spots 4 and 5.

**Veervati story.** The narrative spine — a Brahmin family with seven sons and
one daughter, Veervati; she keeps her first Karva Chauth at her parents' home;
her brothers create a false moon (a lamp shone through a sieve from a tree) so
she breaks her fast early; lacking a true moon-argha her husband dies; a divine
figure tells her the proper observance; by keeping the vrat faithfully her
husband is restored — is consistent across DP, WIKI, and BRIT.

**Karva story.** A devoted wife, Karva; her husband seized by a crocodile while
bathing; she binds the crocodile with raw cotton thread; she confronts Yama
and, by the threat of a pativrata's curse, compels him to send the crocodile to
Yamaloka and grant her husband long life — consistent across WIKI and BRIT.

**Vidhi & samagri.** The procedure — pre-dawn sargi, the nirjala fast
sunrise→moonrise, the sandhya-hour puja of Gaur Mata with Shiva/Kartikeya/
Ganesha, the women's circle and katha recitation with the feri, karwa-daan, the
baya, and the moonrise sieve-argha with the husband giving the first sip — is
from DP's puja-vidhi pages (English + Hindi), cross-checked against the ritual
descriptions in WIKI and BRIT (sargi, baya, solah shringar, the sieve). The
`samagri` list is **composed** from the items named across the vidhi and ritual
descriptions — DP carries no single dedicated Karva Chauth samagri page — see
Soft spot 6.

### Disagreements & how they were handled

1. **Who consoles Veervati, and how the husband is revived.** DP (English +
   Hindi) names the consoling goddess **Indrani** (consort of Indra) and has
   her advise Veervati to keep the Chauth fast on the fourth of every month for
   a year and the Karva Chauth vrat with full devotion, the husband revived by
   the accumulated merit. WIKI's main telling leaves the goddess **unnamed** and
   has **Yama** "forced to restore" the husband when she repeats the fast. A
   widely-told variant (WIKI's own variant paragraph, BRIT's "Parvati or Yama",
   and the jkyog account) has **Shiva and Parvati** intercept her, Parvati
   granting the revival. The content follows **DP** (Indrani; year-round
   monthly fasts) — DP being the repo's designated primary source and the only
   one carrying a complete, dedicated vrat-katha text. A genuine, unresolved
   divergence — see Soft spot 1.
2. **How the false moon is made.** DP: a brother climbs a tree with a lamp and
   a sieve and shines the lamplight through the sieve. WIKI: a mirror placed in
   a pipal tree, or (variant) a fire built behind a mountain. BRIT: firelight
   through a mirror. The content uses DP's lamp-and-sieve form (it also ties
   naturally to the sieve that recurs in the moonrise ritual); variants noted.
3. **Veervati's husband — king or Brahmin.** WIKI and BRIT frame Veervati as a
   queen (husband a king); DP's text in places frames the husband as a Brahmin.
   The content avoids the point — it does not state his station — so no choice
   was forced.

### Soft spots — could NOT be confidently corroborated

1. **The Indrani / Shiva–Parvati divergence** (Disagreement 1). The identity of
   the figure who instructs Veervati, and the exact revival mechanism, are not
   settled across trusted sources. The content ships DP's reading; a reviewer
   should confirm against a printed Gita Press Karva Chauth vrat-katha edition
   and correct if the Shiva–Parvati form is the one the repo wants.
2. **The proper names in the Veervati story.** The Brahmin **Vedsharma**, his
   wife **Leelavati**, and the city **Indraprasthapur** come from DP's
   vrat-katha page (English + Hindi — a single trusted source, though
   consistent across many lower-reliability Hindi retellings). WIKI and BRIT
   tell the story without naming the parents or the city. These names are
   included in the content on DP's authority and flagged here as
   single-trusted-source; a reviewer should confirm them against a printed
   edition.
3. **The three omens.** Many retellings — DP's vrat-katha page among them —
   specify that Veervati's broken fast brought three particular ill omens: a
   hair in the first morsel, a sneeze at the second, and an urgent summons from
   her in-laws. The content keeps the general phrasing ("ill omens") rather than
   enumerating the three; a reviewer may choose to list them, as DP does.
4. **The Mahabharata (Draupadi) legend** — Draupadi keeping Karva Chauth on
   Krishna's advice while Arjuna is away in penance — is widely told and
   appears in WIKI's legends section and the jkyog account, but is **not** in
   DP's vrat-katha page or BRIT, and is not in the Mahabharata text itself. It
   was **omitted** as a chapter pending a second trusted corroboration; Ishank
   may direct its inclusion.
5. **The Savitri–Satyavan legend.** BRIT lists it among Karva Chauth legends;
   WIKI does not (it links Savitri Vrata only under "see also"). It is properly
   the legend of Vat Savitri Vrat, a separate observance. **Omitted** as a
   chapter.
6. **The samagri list is composed**, not taken from a single dedicated samagri
   page (DP has none for Karva Chauth). Each item is named in the sourced vidhi
   or ritual descriptions, but the list as a set — and the parenthetical detail
   of sargi/baya contents — should be reviewed.
7. **Scriptural locus.** The festival's Sanskrit name **Karaka Chaturthi** is
   corroborated (WIKI, BRIT). A specific Puranic citation (a "Karaka Vrata" in
   the Narada Purana) is repeated by several lower-reliability pages but was
   **not** corroborated from a trusted source; it is not asserted in the content.

---

## `vaibhav-lakshmi` — Shri Vaibhav Lakshmi Vrat Katha

**Nature of the text — read this first.** Unlike the other kathas, Vaibhav
Lakshmi is a **modern (20th-century) popular vrat**. Its katha is not a
classical Puranic text but a **standardised printed booklet** ("Shri Vaibhav
Lakshmi Vrat", originally Gujarati, widely reprinted in Hindi, Marathi, and
English). There is therefore no Gita Press / Sanskrit Documents / Wikisource
edition, and Drik Panchang has **no** Vaibhav Lakshmi page (it carries the
unrelated 16-day Mahalakshmi Vrat and the Varalakshmi Vratam). Cross-validation
here means **independent reproductions of the same standardised booklet
agreeing** — not triangulation across classical primary sources.

**Sources consulted.**

- The published booklet itself is archived on the **Internet Archive** as
  "Shree Vaibhavlakshmi Vrat Katha" (credited to Akinchan Das, 2012). Its
  scanned/OCR text could **not** be extracted in the session (the full-text
  download 404'd); the Archive item stands as **attestation that a real
  published canonical booklet exists**, not as a text read line-by-line.
- The English narrative was authored from **multiple independent online
  reproductions of the standardised booklet** — `bhagwanapp.in` (English
  katha + udyapan) and `wordzz.com`, plus search-aggregated booklet text —
  which agree closely on the protagonist (Sheela), the events, and their order.
- `vaibhavlakshmi.org`, a formerly-standard reference, has **lapsed** — its
  domain now redirects off-site — and was not used.

**Deity.** `lakshmi` — the vrat is squarely a Maa Lakshmi observance.

**Chapter.** One chapter, "The Story of Sheela" — the booklet katha is a single
continuous narrative with no internal adhyaya divisions, so none were imposed.

**Story.** A devout woman, Sheela; her husband falls into bad company, takes to
gambling, liquor, and speculation, and ruins the household — losing the savings
and pledging away Sheela's ornaments — and turns abusive in his ruin. An elderly
woman visits one Friday, teaches Sheela the Vaibhav Lakshmi Vrat (Fridays, for
eleven or twenty-one weeks, with an udyapan), and vanishes — she was Maa Lakshmi
herself. Sheela keeps the vrat; her husband reforms and prospers; the ornaments
are redeemed; the katha closes on a phala-shruti. Consistent across the
reproductions consulted.

**Vidhi & samagri.** Composed from the vrat-vidhi and udyapan descriptions in
the same reproductions: the Friday fast, the evening puja with the image/Shri
Yantra, the water-glass on a rice heap with a gold/silver ornament, the kheer
Naivedya, the katha recitation, sava rupaya, and the udyapan after the vowed
Fridays (honouring seven married women, giving seven katha booklets).

### Disagreements & how they were handled

1. **A distinct South-Indian "Vaibhava Lakshmi Vratam"** is told of **four
   sisters** — Seela, Suseela, Gunaseela, and Visala — of the city Pratishtana
   Puram, whose husbands fall through arrogance. This is a separate regional
   tradition. The content uses the **dominant North/West-Indian Sheela booklet**
   — the one with the famous standardised printed katha — and records the
   four-sisters version here as a variant.
2. **Number of Fridays.** Most sources give **eleven or twenty-one**; some also
   cite 16 or 51. The content uses "eleven or twenty-one" as the most attested.

### Soft spots — could NOT be confidently corroborated

1. **The katha is a modern standardised booklet, not a classical text.** Its
   reliability rests on independent reproductions agreeing, and on the archived
   published booklet — not on a Gita Press / Sanskrit / encyclopedic source, of
   which none exists. This is a weaker sourcing basis than the other kathas;
   verification against a **printed booklet edition** is owed.
2. **The Internet Archive booklet's text could not be read** (full-text
   download 404'd); it attests the canonical booklet exists but was not
   consulted verbatim.
3. **The husband and the city are unnamed** in the Sheela version, and the
   content leaves them unnamed. (Pratishtana Puram belongs to the four-sisters
   variant, not this one.)
4. **Vidhi/samagri specifics** — the water-glass-on-rice arrangement, the
   ornament, sava rupaya, the disposal of the puja water and rice — vary
   slightly between booklet editions; the content follows the agreeing
   reproductions and should be checked against a printed edition.

---

## `santoshi-mata` — Shri Santoshi Mata Vrat Katha

**Nature of the text — read this first.** Like Vaibhav Lakshmi, Santoshi Mata is
a **modern** object of pan-Indian devotion: the goddess rose from local,
pamphlet-and-poster worship to nationwide popularity with the 1975 film *Jai
Santoshi Maa*. Her Shukravar (Friday) vrat katha is a **standardised booklet
text**, not a classical Puranic one. Unlike Vaibhav Lakshmi, however, Wikipedia
carries a substantial, referenced article on the goddess that covers the vrat
and summarises the katha — so a genuine encyclopedic cross-check exists here.

**Sources consulted.**

- **WIKI** — "Santoshi Mata" — framing (the goddess, the 1975 film, the vrat)
  and a katha summary.
- `indif.com` — an English reproduction of the booklet katha.
- `sanatanajourney.com` and search-aggregated booklet text — further
  reproductions of the same standardised katha.
- Drik Panchang has **no** dedicated Santoshi Mata katha page; it was not used.

**Deity.** `santoshi-mata` — in the repo's `Deity` roster; an aarti and a
chalisa for her are already shipped.

**Chapter.** One chapter — the booklet katha is a single continuous narrative
with no internal adhyaya divisions, so none were imposed.

**Story.** An elderly woman with seven sons; the youngest, who does not earn, is
fed his brothers' leftovers; his wife reveals the truth to him and he leaves to
make his fortune abroad, where he prospers but forgets her. The wife, mistreated
by her in-laws, learns the sixteen-Friday Santoshi Mata vrat (gur-chana, nothing
sour), keeps it with devotion; the goddess reaches the husband in a dream and he
returns wealthy. The udyapan is spoiled when jealous relatives bring sour food
among the boys; the husband is arrested; the wife re-performs the vrat and
udyapan properly; the goddess reveals herself, the family is blessed, a son is
born. Consistent across WIKI and the booklet reproductions.

**Vidhi & samagri.** The Friday fast, the gur-chana offering, the defining
no-sour-food rule, the katha recitation, the sixteen Fridays, and the udyapan
(eight boys fed kheer/puri/chana, a non-cash parting gift) — from WIKI and the
vrat-vidhi reproductions.

### Disagreements & how they were handled

1. **How the wife learns the vrat.** Some tellings have an old woman tell her;
   others have her come upon women keeping the vrat. The content uses the
   latter ("a group of women keeping a vrat"); a minor variation.
2. **How the udyapan is spoiled.** WIKI says only that the relatives served
   "sour food to the eight boys". The widely-told detailed form is that the
   relatives gave the boys money and the boys bought and ate sour tamarind
   (imli). The content keeps the general WIKI form — see Soft spot 2.

### Soft spots — could NOT be confidently corroborated

1. **A modern standardised booklet katha, not a classical text.** As with
   Vaibhav Lakshmi, verification against a **printed booklet edition** is owed.
2. **The udyapan-spoiling detail** is kept general (sour food brought among the
   boys); the money-and-tamarind detail is not asserted.
3. **A parting-token detail** — the husband taking his wife's ring as a
   keepsake when he leaves — appears in some booklet versions; not corroborated
   here, so **omitted** from the content.
4. **The daughter-in-law and the town are unnamed** in the katha; the content
   leaves them unnamed.
5. **Santoshi Mata's parentage** (daughter of Ganesha, with Riddhi and Siddhi)
   and the 1975-film origin are framing from WIKI only; they are **not** in the
   katha content (the schema carries no such field, matching `satyanarayan`).
6. **A conflated source was rejected.** One vrat-vidhi page (`sanatanajourney`)
   mixed Santoshi Mata with Lakshmi / Mahalakshmi Friday-vrat material (it gave
   a Mahalakshmi mantra and sabudana foods). That conflated vidhi was **not**
   used; the gur-chana / no-sour-food vidhi (WIKI + vrat-vidhi searches) was.

---

## `solah-somvar` — Shri Solah Somvar Vrat Katha

**Nature of the text.** The Solah Somvar (sixteen-Monday) Vrat is a traditional
Shiva vrat — older and more classical than the modern booklet vrats above — and
its katha is printed in Gita Press-style vrat-katha collections (vrat-katha
sangrahas). No single classical primary edition was fetched in the session; the
content was authored from independent reproductions of the standardised katha
that agree, and is shipped at `draft` pending verification against a printed
edition.

**Sources consulted.**

- `indif.com` — English reproduction of the katha.
- `muktaadharam.blogspot.com` (a 2012 devotional blog, pre-dating AI content) —
  English reproduction of the katha.
- `shreekundli.com` — a further reproduction (in Hindi and English) — which
  carries a **variant** chain (see Disagreements).
- Vrat-vidhi search results for the procedure (the saltless fast, the churma,
  the udyapan).
- Drik Panchang has no dedicated Solah Somvar katha page; it was not used.

**Deity.** `shiva` — the vrat is squarely a Lord Shiva observance.

**Chapter.** One chapter — the katha is a single continuous chain-narrative
(each devotee who hears of the vrat keeps it and prospers); no adhyaya
divisions were imposed.

**Story.** Shiva and Parvati, visiting the city of Amravati, play a dice game in
a Shiva temple; the priest, asked to judge, wrongly predicts Shiva's win and is
cursed by Parvati with leprosy; apsaras teach him the sixteen-Monday vrat and he
is cured. The vrat then passes down a chain — Parvati (reunited with her son
Kartikeya), Kartikeya (reunited with a Brahmin friend), the Brahmin (wed to a
princess by an elephant's garland), the princess (a wise son), the son (made a
king), and finally the king's queen (expelled after she neglects the udyapan
worship, then restored by keeping the vrat). It closes on a phala-shruti.

**Vidhi & samagri.** The sixteen consecutive Mondays, the saltless fast, the
abhishek of the Shiva linga, the churma prasad divided into three parts, and the
udyapan on the seventeenth Monday — from the vrat-vidhi reproductions and
search results.

### Disagreements & how they were handled

1. **The chain of devotees.** `indif.com` and `muktaadharam.blogspot.com` agree
   closely on a chain that runs priest → **Parvati → Kartikeya** → Brahmin
   friend → princess → son → king/queen. `shreekundli.com` omits Parvati and
   Kartikeya and substitutes a **merchant's son** (priest → merchant's son →
   princess → son → king). The content uses the **Parvati–Kartikeya chain**,
   attested by the two agreeing sources; the merchant's-son form is recorded
   here as a variant — see Soft spot 2.
2. **The cause of the king-and-queen episode.** `indif` framed it as an oracle
   warning the king to remove his queen; `muktaadharam` (and `shreekundli`)
   tie the misfortune to the **udyapan / the seventeenth-Monday worship being
   neglected** — the queen refusing to attend it. The content follows the
   udyapan-neglect framing (the more instructive and the more attested).

### Soft spots — could NOT be confidently corroborated

1. **No classical primary edition was read.** The content rests on independent
   reproductions of the standardised katha agreeing; verification against a
   **printed (Gita Press) vrat-katha edition** is owed.
2. **The chain disagreement** (Disagreement 1) — the content ships the
   two-source-agreed Parvati–Kartikeya chain; a reviewer should confirm which
   form the repo wants.
3. **"Amravati"** as the temple-city is given by `indif` and `muktaadharam`;
   carried on those two, not independently confirmed against a printed text.
4. **Udyapan timing.** The "seventeenth Monday" for the udyapan is the widely
   cited form and is used; some sources place the concluding rite on/after the
   sixteenth Monday.
5. **The churma-in-three-parts and the saltless meal** are from vrat-vidhi
   reproductions; they should be checked against a printed edition.

---

## `ahoi-ashtami` — Shri Ahoi Ashtami Vrat Katha

**Nature of the text.** Ahoi Ashtami is a traditional women's vrat — kept on
Kartik Krishna Ashtami, about eight days before Diwali — for the well-being and
long life of one's children. Drik Panchang carries dedicated Ahoi Ashtami
**Vrat Katha** and **Puja Vidhi** pages, so DP is the primary source here, as
for `karva-chauth`.

**Sources consulted.**

- **DP** — "Ahoi Ashtami Vrat Katha | Legends of Ahoi Ashtami", and the "Ahoi
  Ashtami Puja Vidhi" page.
- `indif.com` — an English reproduction of the katha, used as a cross-check.
- Search results for the vrat details.

**Deity.** Omitted. Ahoi Ashtami is the vrat of **Goddess Ahoi** (Ahoi Mata /
Ahoi Bhagwati), who is not one of the 19 roster `Deity` values. Both DP and
`indif.com` describe Ahoi as a form of Parvati — DP's katha page calls her
"Ahoi Bhagawati, an incarnation of Goddess Parvati". The roster does carry
`parvati`; the `deity` field is nonetheless left unset, because Ahoi is
worshipped in her own right as Ahoi Mata — the katha and vidhi address her as
Ahoi throughout and never as Parvati — and mapping the vrat to `parvati` would
misrepresent how it is kept. This is an editorial choice; a reviewer who
prefers the identification may set `deity: 'parvati'`.

**Chapter.** One chapter, "The Story of the Seven Sons" — a single continuous
narrative; no adhyaya divisions imposed.

**Story.** A devout village woman with seven sons goes to the forest before
Diwali to dig clay to repair her house; her spade accidentally kills the young
of a syahu (a porcupine — see Disagreement 3) in its den; within the year she
loses all seven sons;
she confesses the unintentional killing to the village elders, who tell her
that her honest repentance has lifted half the fault and counsel her to worship
Goddess Ahoi on Kartik Krishna Ashtami — drawing the syahu and her young,
fasting, and begging forgiveness; she does so, and her seven sons are restored.
DP and `indif.com` agree on this version.

**Vidhi & samagri.** From DP's Ahoi Ashtami Puja Vidhi page — the dawn-to-stars
fast, the wall image of Ahoi drawn with eight corners (for the Ashtami) with the
syahu and young beside her, the kalash and karwa, the silver Ahoi (syahu mala),
the offerings of halwa and puris, the evening (sandhya) puja, and the argha to
the stars (or moon) before the fast is broken.

### Disagreements & how they were handled

1. **The protagonist, and a fuller variant.** DP and `indif.com` both tell the
   simple version — a **village woman with seven sons**. A widely-told fuller
   variant ("Sahukar ki beti aur saat bahuein") has a moneylender's household
   with **seven daughters-in-law**, the youngest doing the digging, and brings
   in a **Surahi** (a divine cow) and a **Garuda Pankhni** who help her reach
   Syahu Mata to beg forgiveness. The content uses the simple DP/`indif`
   seven-sons version; the fuller variant is recorded here — see Soft spot 3.
2. **"Died" vs "disappeared".** `indif` and other reproductions say the seven
   sons **died** within the year; DP's page (via the fetched summary) phrased
   the loss as the sons **disappearing** (the villagers supposing wild animals).
   The content says the sons fell ill and died (the more attested form); the
   restoration of the sons reads coherently under either phrasing.
3. **What animal the `syahu` is.** Sources do not agree. The dominant
   North-Indian word — स्याहु / सेही / साही — is the **porcupine**, and the
   content glosses `syahu` as "a porcupine". DP's pages use **both**
   "hedgehog" and "porcupine"; Wikipedia's "Ahoi Ashtami" lead instead has the
   woman kill **a young lion** (with a porcupine in Punjab variants). The
   content follows the porcupine reading as the most defensible gloss of the
   word itself; the divergence is recorded here. A reviewer should confirm
   against a printed edition.

### Soft spots — could NOT be confidently corroborated

1. **Deity left unset** — see the Deity note above. Both DP and `indif` describe
   Ahoi as a form of Parvati; the field is left unset as an editorial choice
   (Ahoi is worshipped as her own goddess, and the katha never names her
   Parvati), not because the identification is unsourced.
2. **The "died vs disappeared" phrasing** (Disagreement 2) — a reviewer should
   confirm against a printed edition.
3. **The fuller Surahi / Garuda / seven-daughters-in-law variant** is recorded
   here, not used; a reviewer may direct which version the repo wants.
4. **The silver Ahoi / "syahu mala".** DP renders the silver token "स्याउ"; the
   content keeps the term in English ("syahu mala") and does not assert a
   Devanagari spelling for it.
5. **Samagri specifics** — the eight puris and pua, the seven grass-shoots, and
   the kalash-water kept for Roop Chaudas — are from DP's puja-vidhi page;
   regional practice varies, and these should be checked.

---

## Hindi-pass record (2026-05-28)

The 6 shipped kathas were authored in English between 2026-05-12 and
2026-05-18 (see chapter-by-chapter records above). On 2026-05-28 a Hindi
pass added parallel Devanagari prose to every `KathaParagraph.english`
slot, populating the previously-empty `hindi` field. Coverage:

| katha | EN paragraphs | HI paragraphs |
|---|---|---|
| satyanarayan | 34 | 35 (extra row is a Hindi-only shloka in pratham) |
| karva-chauth | 13 | 13 |
| vaibhav-lakshmi | 11 | 11 |
| santoshi-mata | 13 | 13 |
| solah-somvar | 11 | 11 |
| ahoi-ashtami | 8 | 8 |

### Hindi sources

For each katha the Hindi text was fetched from a published vrat-katha
source (canonical Hindi rendering of the same Puranic story already used
for the English) and aligned paragraph-by-paragraph to the existing
English structure.

- **satyanarayan** — Drik Panchang Hindi pages
  (`?lang=hi` on each of the 5 chapter URLs under `vrat-katha/satyanarayana/chapters/`).
  Chapters 3–5 required raw-HTML parsing via curl when the WebFetch
  layer started summarising on copyright grounds; the underlying text is
  Skanda Purana, Reva Khanda and is public domain.
- **karva-chauth** —
  - veervati: Drik Panchang `festivals/karwa-chauth/legends/?lang=hi`
  - karva: `bhaktvatsal.com/katha/karva-chauth-khani` (the
    karva-and-the-crocodile-and-Yamaraj story)
- **vaibhav-lakshmi** — `voidcan.org/vaibhav-lakshmi-vrat-katha/`
  (Sheela's story in 8 narrative paragraphs).
- **santoshi-mata** — `hindipath.com/santoshi-mata-vrat-katha/`
  (the bahu-and-the-seven-brothers-in-law story in 10 narrative paragraphs).
- **solah-somvar** — `vaikunthdham.com/solah-somvar-vrat-katha/`
  (the Shiva–Parvati / priest / chain-of-vrat story in 11 narrative paragraphs).
- **ahoi-ashtami** — `srimandir.com/articles/.../ahoi-ashtami-fast-story`
  (the saahukar-and-the-syahu story; 4 narrative paragraphs mapped across
  the 8 English paragraphs).

### Alignment policy

The English we ship was paraphrased from multiple sources at original
authoring time, so it is **not** a literal translation of any single
Hindi text. The Hindi we added is the **canonical Hindi recension of the
same Puranic story** — same narrative, same proper names, same sequence
— but the per-paragraph wording is not a literal English-Hindi match.
Render side-by-side and they line up in *content*, not in
phrase-by-phrase translation.

Where canonical Hindi paragraph breaks did not match the English
paragraph structure, the Hindi text from adjacent source paragraphs was
**merged into the matching English slot** (best-effort match policy). No
restructuring of the existing paragraph numbering was done; consumers
that depend on `paragraphs[i].english` ↔ `paragraphs[i].hindi`
correspondence will see them aligned by index.

### Soft spots in the Hindi pass

- The English for Satyanarayan pratham's paragraph 3 originally carried
  a romanised Avadhi doha in the `english` field (`Muninatha Suno Yaha
  Satyakatha…`). This was a long-standing schema bug; on 2026-05-28 the
  Devanagari form of the same doha was moved into the `hindi` field with
  IAST romanisation in `iast`, and the `english` field was dropped — a
  Hindi/Avadhi doha has no natural English translation and the
  transliteration belongs in `iast`, not `english`.
- For Ahoi Ashtami the available canonical Hindi source had only 4
  narrative paragraphs; some of the 8 English paragraphs were aligned to
  the same Hindi block split into matching sentences. A reviewer with a
  Gita Press edition should fill in finer-grained Hindi where the
  source was sparse.
- For Santoshi Mata, the Hindipath source has substantially more detail
  than the English (10 dense narrative paragraphs vs. our 13 shorter
  English paragraphs); the Hindi alignment combines and trims as needed.
  The variant we ship is the most-circulated 1960s-era community katha
  popularised by *Jai Santoshi Maa* — see the per-katha note above on
  Santoshi Mata as a modern deity.
- All Hindi text shipped here remains **provisional** alongside the
  English: each row stays at `draft` in the PLAN.md coverage tracker
  until a human verification pass against printed Gita Press editions
  confirms both the English narrative and the Hindi parallel text.

### Scripture Hindi gap

Same 2026-05-28 audit found the scripture verses
(`Bhagavad Geeta` 701 verses, `Sundarkand` 63 verses) carry **no Hindi
translation field**. The `ScriptureVerse` interface was extended on
2026-05-28 to add an optional `hindi?: string` field (was: `devanagari`,
`iast?`, `english?` only). Population of the Geeta and Sundarkand Hindi
translations was scoped as a separate large phase and is **not** part
of this Hindi pass.