कजली तीज व्रत कथा (भाद्रपद कृष्ण तृतीया) · Kajli Teej Vrat Katha (Bhadrapad Krishna Tritiya)

Just as Hariyali Teej is celebrated on Tritiya of Shravan's bright fortnight, Kajli Teej falls on Tritiya of Bhadrapad's dark fortnight, and is also called Budhi Teej. On this day, wheat, barley, gram, and rice are mixed with ghee and dried fruits to prepare sattu, from which various dishes are made and eaten only after moonrise — hence its other names, Satudi Teej or Satwa Teej. Cow worship holds special importance this day: seven flour roundels are prepared, topped with ghee and jaggery, and fed to the cow before the family itself eats. As with Hariyali Teej, gifts called sinjara are sent from the in-laws' household, and daughters-in-law present their mother-in-law with sugar and money as bhayana. The festival is celebrated with particular fervor in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, especially around Mirzapur and Banaras, where people ride out on boats to compete in singing Kajari — regarded as the region's great monsoon folk song, much as Malhar songs are sung in Braj. Homes prepare sweets and dishes and hang swings; in village dialect the festival is also known simply as "Teeja."

A merchant had four sons and four daughters-in-law. The three elder daughters-in-law came from prosperous, well-settled families, but the youngest had no one left at her maternal home. On Badi Teej, when sattu arrived from the parental homes of the three elder daughters-in-law, the youngest grew deeply distressed, wondering where her own sattu would come from. She told her husband that, whatever it took, he must arrange sattu for her. He tried the whole day but could not succeed, and when he came home to find his wife so sorrowful, he could not sleep that night.

The next day, Teej day itself, he slipped out of the house before sunrise and quietly entered a grocer's shop. Taking some gram lentils from there, he began grinding them on a hand-mill. The sound woke the grocer's household, who caught him and demanded to know why. He confessed the truth — that tomorrow was Satudi Teej, that his wife had no one left at her parental home, and that he had come to steal the makings of sattu; finding dal, sugar, and ghee in the shop, he had begun preparing sattu from them. Moved by this, the grocer said, 'Go home — from today, your wife is our dharma-daughter.'

The husband returned home, and the next morning the grocer sent servants bearing four kinds of sattu balls, a sari, and other puja items to the couple's house. Seeing such abundance, the elder sisters-in-law were astonished and asked how all this had come to one whose maternal home held no one. The youngest daughter-in-law told them the whole story, explaining that it had all been sent by her dharma-father, the grocer. In this way, her honesty and her husband's devotion turned a stranger into family.