Two stories are told on this last day of Pitru Paksha. The first says why Amavasya is the ancestors' own day. The second says why they are fed through these sixteen days.
The Matsya Purana tells of the ancestors called the Agnishvattas, who live in worlds of their own above the earth. They had a daughter born not from a body but from their minds: Acchoda, whom many Hindi tellings call Akshoda. She was a river as well, the river Acchoda, which the ancestors themselves had brought into being. For a thousand years she sat in tapas.
When the thousand years were over, the ancestors came to her to grant a boon. They came young and handsome, wearing garlands and sweet scents. Among them was one called Amavasu. Acchoda looked at him, desire rose in her, and she asked to marry him.
Amavasu did not give way. And in the moment the wish arose in her, the strength of her thousand years left her. She had lived in the heavens by the power of her tapas; with it gone, she fell to the earth. The day on which she asked, and Amavasu stood firm, came to be called Amavasya, after him. That, the Purana says, is why Amavasya is dear to the ancestors, and why what is offered to them on it they accept so gladly.
Acchoda, her power gone, was ashamed. She bowed her head and wept, and begged the ancestors to save her. They thought of what was fated, and of the work the devas had yet to do, and they spoke to her gently. In the heavens, they said, a deed bears its fruit at once, in the same body; only on earth does a deed bear some of its fruit in another life.
“Because of this wish, daughter, you will be born on earth from a fish, in the twenty-eighth Dvapara, as the daughter of Vasu. On an island thick with jujube trees you will bear the rishi Parashar a son, Badarayana — Ved Vyas, a portion of Vishnu ji, who will divide the Veda. You will be the queen of King Shantanu and bear him two sons, Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. Then you will come back to the world of the ancestors. On earth you will be called Satyavati, and here the Ashtaka, and you will give long life, health and the fruit of every wish. And in time you will be the river Acchoda, known across the world.”
Having said this, the ancestors vanished, and Acchoda went to live out what they had told her. The Hindi telling read on this day adds a curse, the ancestors' anger at her wish, and sets her tapas on the Amavasya of Ashwin. The Matsya names no curse and no month: in it she falls by her own wish, and the day is named for the one who did not give way.
Households tell a second story in this fortnight, and in most regions it is the one children know. When Karna died in the war, he reached heaven, for all his life he had given away gold and jewels. But when he asked for food there, he was given gold and jewels instead.
He asked Indra why — in some tellings it is Yama he asks. He was told: all your life you gave gold, but you never once gave food or water to your ancestors, and so gold is what you are given to eat. One telling adds that his sons had fallen in the war too, so there was nobody left on earth to give food in his name.
Karna answered that he had never known who his ancestors were, so how could he have fed them? Then he was allowed to go back to the earth for sixteen days — fourteen, in some tellings. In those days he gave water and food to the ancestors he had never known, did their shraddha, and fed the hungry.
When he went back, he was given food. Those sixteen days are Pitru Paksha, and this Amavasya is the last of them. The story is not in the Mahabharata itself, but it is told in homes across most of India through this fortnight.
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