Skandapurana 6.3.228

Yudhiṣṭhira said: / When someone goes on a pilgrimage on behalf of another, who obtains what fruit, / and to what extent, O best of sages? Tell me that, O ocean of compassion!

Mārkaṇḍeya said: / Listen to me speak of that, O king, concerning one who goes on behalf of another, / how much fruit of the pilgrimage and other rites is ordained for him.

A member of a higher caste, out of greed for wealth or the like, O king, / must never perform pilgrimage and similar practices on behalf of an inferior.

A wise man should perform religious acts himself, O great king, / or according to the capacity of his body, or through someone else if bound by necessity.

One should almost always have religious acts performed by a person of one's own caste, / or by sons, grandsons, and the like, or by kinsmen born of the same lineage.

For religious acts performed by them are declared to be excellent, O Yudhiṣṭhira; / therefore, one should have them performed only by them, not by superiors nor by inferiors.

That which is performed by an inferior is not done properly—such is my opinion; / and a superior acting on behalf of an inferior will indeed fall into a degraded state.

One should not give counsel to a śūdra, nor leftover food, nor sacrificial offerings; / one should not instruct him in dharma, nor prescribe a vow for him.

Recitation of mantras, austerity, pilgrimage, renunciation, mastering mantras, / deity worship, and initiation—these six cause the downfall of women and śūdras.

A woman whose husband is alive certainly falls; a widow may perform everything; / a woman with a husband should perform everything with his permission if the husband is present.

Going on behalf of another to a sacred ford or the like, one obtains a sixteenth of the fruit; / but if one goes along in company, half the fruit is taught for the sacred ford.

Those who know understand that bathing merely alongside yields the fruit of ritual ablution; / it does not yield the fruit of pilgrimage declared in the scriptures, which destroys impurity.

On behalf of a father, a paternal uncle, a mother, a maternal grandfather, / a maternal uncle, a brother, a father-in-law, or a son;

or on behalf of a foster father and others, a maternal grandmother, a guru, / a sister, a maternal aunt, a paternal aunt, an ācārya, or an instructor—

having bathed on behalf of such persons, a man obtains an eighth part himself; / but performing it directly on behalf of parents, he obtains a fourth part.

The wise state that between husband and wife, the fruit shared is half; / for a nephew, a pupil, a brother's son, and a son, / a man indeed receives sixths, thirds, fifths, and fourths of the fruit.

Thus has been told to you, O Pārtha, as handed down through tradition: / the means of dharma on behalf of another should be performed by the circle of kinsmen.

At the arrival of the rainy season, all rivers are impure, / except the Sarasvatī, the Gaṅgā, the Narmadā, and the river Yamunā.

Thus ends the two hundred and twenty-eighth chapter, named 'Account of the Fruit of Pilgrimage on Behalf of Another', in the Revākhaṇḍa of the fifth section, the Āvantyakhaṇḍa, in the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa, a compendium of eighty-one thousand verses.