Tulasi Vivaha
Tulasi Vivaha, also called Tulasi Kalyanam, is a Hindu ritual, in which a symbolic ceremonial wedding takes place between a tulasi plant or holy basil and a shaligrama or an amla branch. Tulasi Vivaha signifies the end of the monsoon, and the beginning of the wedding season in Hinduism.
The ceremonial wedding is performed anytime between Prabodhini Ekadashi and Kartika Purnima. The day varies regionally.
Legend
Hindu texts such as the Skanda Purana, Padma Purana, as well as the Shiva Purana feature Tulasi in the tale of the asuras, Vrinda and her husband Jalandhara. Vrinda is described as a pious devotee of Vishnu who marries Jalandhara. Due to Vrinda's fidelity, Jalandhara was endowed with power that made him invincible, even by the gods. One day, upon hearing the details of Parvati's beauty from Narada, Jalandhara demands Parvati's husband, Shiva, hand her over to him which leads to a battle between the two. In the midst of the duel, Jalandhara employs his illusory arts, and attempts to abduct Parvati in the guise of Shiva. When Parvati realises his trickery, she escapes and prays to Vishnu that Vrinda also encounters the same fate of deception.Vrinda has an ominous nightmare where she sees her husband seated on a buffalo. Disturbed, Vrinda attempts to find peace by walking in a park, but is frightened upon seeing two rakshasas. Vishnu, in the guise of a sage, rescues Vrinda and reveals that her husband is dead. She urges the sage to resuscitate her departed husband. Vishnu then deceives Vrinda by taking the guise of her husband, Jalandhara and breaking her chastity. When Vrinda realises this, she curses Vishnu that his wife, too, would be separated from him and self-immolates. Her chastity now broken, Shiva is able to defeat Jalandhara.
After the conclusion of the battle, Vishnu is still traumatised by the death of the beautiful Vrinda, and refuses to move from her pyre. The devas invoke Prakriti, the personified force of nature, who offers them three seeds to be planted where Vishnu stays, which represent the sattva, rajas, and tamas gunas. The seeds grow to become three plants, Dhātrī, Mālatī, and Tulasī, who are personified as three women, Svarā, Lakṣmī, and Gaurī. Vishnu is infatuated by the sight of these wondrous women. Since Mālatī is regarded to be jealous of Vishnu's shakti, she is condemned. The goddesses Dhātrī and Tulasī, however, bear genuine love for Vishnu, and make him forget his misery. They accompany Vishnu to Vaikuntha, and greatly please and delight him.
In a variation of this legend, Vrinda immolates herself on her husband's funeral pyre, but Vishnu ensures that she is incarnated in the form of the tulasi plant on earth. She gains the status of a goddess named Tulasi, while her earthly form is the tulasi plant.
In popular tradition, in accordance to a blessing by Vishnu to marry Vrinda in her next birth, Vishnu – in the form of shaligram - married Tulasi on Prabodhini Ekadashi. To commemorate this event, the ceremony of Tulasi Vivaha is performed.
Another minor legend narrates that Lakshmi slew a demon on this day, and remained on earth as the tulasi plant.
A Vaishnava legend relates Tulasi to the Samudra Manthana, the churning of the cosmic ocean by the devas and asuras. At the end of the churning, Dhanvantari rose from the ocean with amrita. Vishnu procures it for the devas, and successfully denies it to the asuras. Vishnu is regarded to have shed happy tears, the first of which fell inside the amrita, and formed Tulasi, who the former married.