Skandapurana 16.204

The goddess said: / O Lord, Lord of the gods of gods, Savior from the ocean of worldly existence, / tell me in detail the māhātmya of the Sarasvatī.

What is the merit for men of restrained self who have come on pilgrimage, O Śaṃkara, / in bathing and making gifts at the mouth?

And what fruit is produced by bathing elsewhere? / What is the rule for the ancestral offering, what are the mantras there, and what brahmins [should be invited]?

What is to be received and what is to be eaten by the brahmins in the rite of ancestral offerings? / What gifts are to be given by men desiring the fruit of the pilgrimage?

Īśvara said:
Listen, O goddess, I shall explain the proper order of the rites of giving and śrāddha; / and learn from me the māhātmya of the Sarasvatī being proclaimed.

Meritorious is the water of the Sarasvatī wherever one immerses oneself; / but when mingled with the ocean, it is difficult to attain even for the gods.

The Sarasvatī is the most meritorious among all rivers; the Sarasvatī offers pleasant immersion for people. / Having reached the Sarasvatī, men are not afflicted; they never grieve, either in this world or the next.

A man who performs meritorious deeds obtains the sacred ford of the Sarasvatī; / on the full-moon day of Vaiśākha or on an occasion involving the Moon, it is rare to attain in the three worlds.

If a new moon joined with Monday is attained right there, / what need is there, O goddess, of hundreds of millions of other sacred occasions?

The Cāndrāyaṇa penances, the Kṛcchra penances, and the Mahāsāṃtapana penances / are assigned as expiations where the Sarasvatī is absent.

As long as a bone of one's body rests in the water of the Sarasvatī, / for that many thousands of years a man resides in Viṣṇu's world. / Those who are able, yet do not look upon

the Sarasvatī situated at Prabhāsa, are to be regarded as equal to the blind from birth, to the dead, and to the crippled. / Those regions, those sacred fords, those hermitages, and those mountains,

through the midst of which the goddess Sarasvatī, the best of rivers, flows, [are blessed]. / Those who take refuge in the holy Sarasvatī, the purifier of the three worlds, / never inhale the stench of the mire of worldly existence again.

Vast as the science of grammar, dear to the world like a mother, / and pure as the intellect of the virtuous, delightful is the Sarasvatī.

The goddess who adorns the three worlds, whose waters are divine and exceedingly pure— / vile is the man who does not bow down to this Sarasvatī.

The Sarasvatī at Prabhāsa has become a ladder to heaven; / this great river cannot be attained by men devoid of merit.

Where the Candrabhāgā, the Gaṅgā, and the Sarasvatī are present, / those who drink from those three rivers are gods, not human beings.

Truly, O goddess, the Gaṅgā was borne on my head; / yet among whatever rivers exist in the world, the Sarasvatī is the most meritorious.

In comparison with the darśana of the Sarasvatī, the Rājasūya sacrifice does not shine; / indeed, a mouthful of its water surpasses the Aśvamedha; its water is superior to all sacrifices.

Whose ash, bones, skin, fluids, / and nails, hair, and the like, / shaken even by the winds, are carried in due course

into the water of the Sarasvatī, those men do not fall under the power of Death. / O goddess, what is the use of speaking much, of describing it again and again? / There has never been, nor will there ever be, a sacred ford superior to the Sarasvatī.

Rarest of all is the bath taken right where it joins the ocean; / by bathing and giving there, one obtains the fruit of ten million sacrifices.

Where the water of the Sarasvatī is churned by the waves of the ocean, / those mortals who bathe there in age after age are fortunate.

They are blessed, they are worthy of veneration, their renown is most abundant, / the bodies of which men are sprinkled with the waters of the Sarasvatī.

Thus ends the two hundred and fourth chapter, named 'Description of the Glory of the Confluence of the Sarasvatī', in the first [part], the Māhātmya of the Prabhāsakṣetra, in the seventh [book], the Prabhāsakhaṇḍa, in the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa of eighty-one thousand verses.