Skandapurana 6.3.159

Śrī Mārkaṇḍeya said: / Then, O great king, one should go to the supremely purifying sacred ford / on the Narmadā, very difficult to attain, the perfected Anarakeśvara.

Having bathed in that sacred ford, O descendant of Bharata, even a doer of sinful deeds / does not see the very terrible [place] called the gate of hell.

Yudhiṣṭhira said: / Having experienced their fruits through good and bad results, dear sir, / by what signs are men born here [in this world]? Tell me those, O best of good men.

Just as the individual soul departs having abandoned the body, and sees it not, / so, entering a body again, joined with the five gross elements,

together with hundreds of skin, bones, flesh, fat, blood, hair, and sinews— / in this mass of feces, urine, and semen, what consciousness arises for men?

Addressed thus, that knower of yoga, Mārkaṇḍeya, spoke, / having meditated on the eternal, all[-pervading] Maheśvara, the god of gods.

Mārkaṇḍeya said: / Listen, O son of Pṛthā, to the great question; I shall tell it as it was heard / of old in the presence of Brahmā at the assembly of seers and gods.

The teacher is the chastiser of the self-controlled; the king is the chastiser of the wicked; / in this world, of secret sins, the chastiser is Yama, son of Vivasvat.

For those who have not performed atonement, indeed in various ways in Yama's realm, / having experienced manifold series of lives through tortures,

when they arrive at human existence, they bear the marks of sin. / I shall explain that to you; listen with an attentive mind, O king.

Having endured all tortures and gone to the abode of the son of Vivasvat, / those whose tortures are exhausted come to the world marked [by signs].

A liar becomes a stammerer, and one who lies about cows becomes mute. / A killer of a brahmin is born a leper, and a drinker of liquor has black teeth.

A stealer of gold has diseased nails; a violator of the teacher's bed has bad skin. / One who has improper sexual union is born from a low womb; a miser becomes poor.

One who sacrifices for those unfit to sacrifice becomes a village pig, O king. / One who sacrifices for many becomes an ass; from eating at an invitation [improperly], a dog.

One who eats uninspected [food] becomes a monkey in a lonely forest. / A slanderer becomes a cat; one who sets fire to brush becomes a firefly.

He who teaches false knowledge surely becomes an ox. / One who gives stale food to a brahmin falls into impotency.

From envy one is born blind; one who steals a book is blind from birth. / The child of one who steals fruits dies—of this there is no doubt.

Having died, he becomes a monkey; freed from that, he has an enlarged goitre. / A man who eats those [fruits] without giving [to others] becomes childless.

One who steals clothing becomes an iguana; a poisoner becomes an eater of wind (a snake). / From intercourse with an ascetic woman, O king, one becomes a piśāca of the desert.

A stealer of water becomes a diver-bird, and a stealer of grain a rat. / Having intercourse with a girl who has not reached puberty, one becomes a snake—so states the tradition.

One who covets the teacher's wife becomes a chameleon for a long time. / A man who breaks a water-reservoir becomes a fish.

A man who sells things that should not be sold becomes one with deformed eyes. / One who engages in unnatural intercourse becomes a wolf, and an owl from cheating in a purchase.

One who eats on the eleventh day after a person's death is born as a dog. / Having promised wealth to a twice-born man and not giving it, one becomes an insect.

From intercourse with a queen one becomes a wicked thief, [then] a dung-eating boar. / A slanderer of twice-born men receives the body of a tortoise.

An attendant on idols, O king, enters the womb called cāṇḍāla. / A seller of fruits becomes unfortunate; the husband of a śūdra woman becomes a scorpion.

One who touches fire with his foot becomes a cat; one who eats meat [unlawfully] becomes diseased. / From intercourse with a sister one becomes a eunuch, and a thief of fragrant scents becomes foul-smelling.

A village bard, a candāla, and an astrologer become asses. / A pseudo-scholar becomes a cat, and a barking dog indeed is Vyāsa [in improper speech].

That very [mark] is seen, O king, from the revealing of another's secrets. / Whatever belongs to another, whether little or much,

having taken it, one attains an animal womb—there is no doubt about this. / These and other signs, O best of kings,

ordained by their own karma, are those by which human beings are recognized. / Thence comes birth, thence death among all living beings, O descendant of Bharata;

it arises—there is no doubt here—when good and bad karma become balanced, / through the union of man and woman, when semen and blood are purified.

Endowed with the five elements, the supreme lord is the sixth: / sense faculties, mind, vital breaths, knowledge, lifespan, pleasure, steadfastness,

retention, impulse, pain, desire, egoism, / effort, form, complexion, voice, aversion, existence, and non-existence—

all this belongs to that beginningless self desiring a beginning. / In the first month, it becomes liquid, mingled with the bodily humours.

In the second month it is a mass of tissue, and in the third endowed with sense faculties. / From space [comes] lightness, subtlety, sound, and the capacity of hearing; / from wind [comes] touch, motion, combustion, and dryness;

from bile [comes] sight, digestion, heat, form, and illumination; / from water [comes] taste, coolness, moisture, wetness, and softness;

from earth [comes] smell, the sense of smell, heaviness, and bodily form. / The unborn self assumes these first, and in the third month it stirs.

By not granting pregnancy cravings, the fetus may incur a defect, / deformity, or even death; therefore, what pleases the woman should be done.

In the fourth month there is stability of the limbs, and in the fifth the generation of blood. / In the sixth comes strength, complexion, and the appearance of nails and hair.

Endowed with consciousness through the mind, covered with hundreds of nails and hairs, / in the seventh and in the eighth month it has skin and memory.

Now to the fetus, now to the mother does its vitality flow back and forth. / Therefore a fetus born in the eighth month is deprived of life.

In the ninth or the tenth month, by the powerful winds of delivery, / it emerges like an arrow through the opening of a machine, full of agony.

Equipped with bodily limbs and provided with major and minor appendages, / there are one hundred and eight vital points and three hundred bones.

Seven cranial bones were ordained by the self-manifest [creator]. / There are three and a half crores of hairs on the limbs, O Bhārata.

Seventy-two thousand [channels] issue forth from the heart; / those channels are called the hitā, and among them is the moon-bright one.

Thus the cycle turns among the fourfold classes of living beings; / birth and destruction occur for all embodied souls.

An upward course comes by righteousness, while a downward course comes by unrighteousness. / It arises for all social classes from falling away from one's own duty, O king.

In the state of godhood and the state of manhood, actions such as gifts and enjoyments / that are seen, O great king, all that is the fruit born of action.

When one's actions are performed in a terrible manner, earned through lust and anger [or] virtuous, / [if sinful] one may sink into a terrifying hell from which there is no crossing over.

For the rescue of living creatures, situated on the bank of the Narmadā, / is this great sacred ford, the supreme Narakeśvara.

It removes hell, grants great religious merit, and destroys heinous sins; / that sacred ford is the best of all sacred fords, hard to attain on earth.

Having bathed at that sacred ford, he who worships the Great Lord, / even if possessed of heinous sins, never sees hell.

He who gives an auspicious Vaitaraṇī cow at that sacred ford / is freed with ease at the Vaitaraṇī river; of this there is no doubt.

Yudhiṣṭhira said: / That river Vaitaraṇī at the terrible door of Yama, / what is its form, what is its extent, and how does it flow, O twice-born?

How are [men] delivered from it, and whose dwelling is there perpetually? / To whom is it favorable? Tell me this in detail.

Glorious Mārkaṇḍeya said: / O son of Dharma, O mighty-armed one, hear everything spoken by me / concerning that great river named Vaitaraṇī at the door of Yama.

It is unfathomable, shoreless, and frightful as soon as it is seen. / Its waters are pus and blood, and it is made of flesh and mud.

Its water swirls rapidly like clarified butter in a frying vessel; / the pus is swarming with worms with adamantine beaks and iron mouths,

and with porpoises and crocodiles equipped with adamantine shears, / and with other exceedingly cruel aquatic creatures that pierce the vitals.

Twelve fierce suns scorch it, as if at the end of a cosmic dissolution; / mortals fall therein, crying out most dreadfully.

"Alas, brother! Son! Alas, mother!" they wail repeatedly. / [Consider] who protects one falling in the terrible sword-leaved forest!

Creatures try to swim across, sink down, and faint with exhaustion. / That great river must be seen by the four classes of living beings.

They cross over it through good gifts; otherwise, they fall. / Those who do not respect their mother, teacher, and preceptor,

and the fools who show them contempt—their dwelling is there perpetually. / A devoted and virtuous wife, properly wedded and steadfast in duties—

those wicked men who abandon her dwell there perpetually. / Of those who have placed their trust—masters, friends, and ascetics—

and of women, children, the elderly, and the wretched, those who seek faults / are cooked in the middle of it, screaming, being great sinners.

The evil-minded one who obstructs a tired and hungry brahmin / is devoured there by worms for three hundred cosmic ages.

He who promises a gift to a brahmin and does not give it, / or having called him says "there is nothing," his dwelling is perpetual.

The arsonist, the poisoner, the informer to the king, the slanderer, / the interrupter of holy tales, the false witness, and the drinker of spirits;

the breaker of diamond-hard [pledges], the usurper of what he himself gave, / the destroyer of dams in good fields, and the violator of another's wife;

a brahmin who sells juices and spices, a husband of a Śūdra woman, / and he who breaks the embankment of a herd of cows afflicted with thirst;

the defiler of maidens, the one who torments [the recipient] after giving a gift, / a Śūdra who drinks the milk of a brown cow, and a brahmin who eats meat—

these reside there perpetually; have no doubt of it, O king. / Hear, O ruler of men, how it may become favorable [to someone]:

At a solstice, at an equinox, during Vyatīpāta, on the conjunction day of the moon, / and at other meritorious times, the supreme gift should be given.

One should make an auspicious Vaitaraṇī [cow], either black or reddish-brown, / with golden horns, silver hooves, and milked into a bell-metal vessel,

covered with a pair of black garments, accompanied by the seven grains; / one should place it, seated on a copper vessel, with the height of a droṇa measure.

One should fashion a golden Yama equipped with an iron staff, / and having tied a raft made of sugarcane stalks with silk cords,

and having placed that cow born from the body of the sun upon the raft, / the wise man should furnish it with an umbrella and a pair of sandals.

He should present a finger-ring and garments to a brahmin, / and holding the tail of this [cow], he should recite this mantra:

"Om. That river Vaitaraṇī at the terrible door of Yama— / desiring to cross it, I give this [cow]; homage to you, O Vaitaraṇī!" / Such is the consecration mantra.

"May cows be in front of me; may cows be behind me; / may cows be in my heart; I dwell in the midst of cows."

"Om. O best of the twice-born, whose form is Viṣṇu, O god on earth, sanctifier of assemblies, / [this cow] is given by me along with a priestly gift; homage to you, O Vaitaraṇī!" / Such is the donation mantra.

Having circumambulated the brahmin, Dharmarāja, / and the auspicious Vaitaraṇī cow, he should offer everything to the brahmin,

holding the tail of the cow and placing the twice-born in front; then:

"O cow, wait for me at the terrifying door of Yama; / wishing to cross over, O cow, homage be to you, O Vaitaraṇī!" / Such is the mantra for following after.

One should accompany him as he walks away, and take everything to his house. / When this is done, O king, that river becomes one of pleasant flow.

By means of that cow, that river flowing with water carries [him] across. / He obtains all desires, both celestial and human.

A sick person is freed from illness, and the greatest calamities are pacified. / [Given] when healthy, [the fruit] is a thousandfold; when afflicted, it is equivalent to a hundredfold.

The gift given on behalf of one who has died, in his absence, is regarded as equal [to ordinary fruit]. / Therefore one should give it with one's own hand; once dead, who will give to whom? / Considering this, O great king, what is given by oneself yields great fruit.

Thus has the gift pertaining to the Vaitaraṇī been declared to you by me, O son of Dharma. / Whoever hears or recites it properly with devotion here goes to the immeasurable realm of Viṣṇu.

Glorious Mārkaṇḍeya said: / When the month of Āśvayuja arrives, on the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight, / having bathed, performed the śrāddha, and worshipped Maheśvara,

a gift is given to the ancestors by those endowed with devotion and faith. / Afterwards, one should keep a vigil by listening to holy stories and other means.

Then at daybreak, having bathed in the waters of the Narmadā / and duly performed the water libation to the ancestors preceded by the gods,

one should give a lamp with clarified butter in a golden vessel to a twice-born. / Afterwards, free from malice, he should feed the brahmins and himself.

When this is done, O best of men, a living being does not go to hell. / A stay in hell must inevitably be seen by men.

Having acted according to this rite, a man does not see the hells. / For men who die in that sacred ford according to the rite, O king,

there is a stay for a manvantara in the world of Śiva, which is hard to attain. / In an aerial chariot having the colour of the sun, adorned with hundreds of small bells,

he goes, O fortunate one, served by hosts of apsarases. / He enjoys various pleasures for the stated time; there is no doubt.

And when that time is fulfilled, having attained human status here, / free from all diseases, he would live for a hundred autumns.

Having reached the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight in the month of Āśvayuja, / having fasted for a day and night and worshipped Maheśvara, / even if joined with great sins, one is liberated; of this there is no doubt.

There are indeed twenty-eight crores of hells, O Yudhiṣṭhira. / Freed from the miseries of hell, they go to the world of Śiva.

Having enjoyed great pleasures there, endowed with celestial sovereignty, / men obtain human birth, which is hard to attain on earth.

Thus ends the one hundred and fifty-ninth chapter, entitled "The Description of the Māhātmya of the Anarakeśvara Sacred Ford", in the Revākhaṇḍa of the fifth Āvantyakhaṇḍa in the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa consisting of eighty-one thousand verses.