Skandapurana 6.3.188

Chapter 188. / The glorious Mārkaṇḍeya said: / Beyond that, O great king, at an interval of forty paces, / one should go to Śālagrāma, worshipped by all the gods, 188.1

where the primal god, the blessed Vāsudeva Trivikrama, / the Soul of the World, dwells in person, out of a desire for the welfare of all. 188.2

Nārada, having performed austerity, himself made a dwelling for the twice-born / on the bank of the Revā, knowing it to be a field of perfections, Bhṛgukṣetra.

The god named Śālagrāma was made to abide [there] for the brahmins, / and Vāsudeva was established for the welfare of the virtuous.

Janārdana, who is to be meditated upon by yogins, for the welfare of yogins / resorted to the bank of the Narmadā precisely under the name Śālagrāma.

When the bright eleventh day occurs in the month of Mārgaśīrṣa, / one should bathe in the holy waters of the Revā and observe a fast on that day.

Having worshipped Janārdana, one should keep vigil at night. / Then, at dawn on the twelfth day, in the waters of the Narmadā,

having bathed and offered libations to the gods, the fathers, and likewise the mothers, / and thereafter having performed a śrāddha for the ancestors according to rule,

having honoured brahmins according to one's means with gifts of gold, garments, and food, / and having asked forgiveness of those brahmins and likewise of the god whose banner is a bird,

listen attentively, O best of kings, to that merit / which accrues to men when this is done, O great king:

He will not encounter sorrow and grief in this world; liberated while living, he attains equality with Murāri. / Having discarded great sins, he never again drinks milk flowing from a mother's breast.

Whoever, having bathed in the waters of the Narmadā that remove torrents of sin, regularly beholds Śālagrāma, / is freed from sins such as the killing of a brahmin through that remembrance of Nārāyaṇa.

Those who, having renounced, dwell there, having subdued sufferings and freed themselves from attachments, / meditating through the method of Sāṅkhya, they too go to that very fourth state, the abode of Murāri.

Thus ends the one hundred and eighty-eighth chapter, named 'Description of the Glory of the Śālagrāmatīrtha', in the Revākhaṇḍa of the fifth [section], the Āvantyakhaṇḍa, in the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa, a compendium of eighty-one thousand verses.