Skandapurana 16.225

Īśvara said: / Then, O great goddess, one should go to the god Anarakeśvara, / in the northern direction from that, destroying all sins. / I shall declare its glory; hear with a single-minded focus, O dear one!

There was a city named Mathurā renowned upon the earth's surface. / There was a brahmin there formerly known as Devaśarman, / belonging to the gotra of Agastya, learned indeed, but afflicted by poverty.

Then another [brahmin] lived there, endowed with a similar form and age, / of the same name and gotra, O goddess of gods, a brahmin who had mastered the Vedas.

Then Yama said to his messenger, whose hair stood up terribly on his head: / "Go at once to Mathurā, friend, and bring Devaśarman!"

Having arrived there, the messenger seized him and went back. / Seeing him, Yama bowed [to the brahmin], and then, filled with anger, said to the messenger:

"This Devaśarman was not commanded by me for you to bring! / There is another Devaśarman whose lifespan is finished—bring him! / And lead this long-lived brahmin back there without delay!"

Īśvara said: / Then the brahmin said: "Lord, I will not go home. / Despondent on account of extreme poverty as long as I live, O lord of gods, / I shall spend the remainder of my life right here in your presence."

Yama said: / "No one comes here before their time, O best of brahmins! / Nor can one whose time is finished live on earth even for an instant.

For this very reason my name is renowned as Dharmarāja.

I have no friend and no enemy on the surface of the earth. / For even pierced by a hundred arrows, one does not die before one's time;

yet even pierced by the tip of a kuśa blade, one does not live when one's time is full. / Therefore go, O best of the twice-born, before your body is cremated!"

Then that brahmin said: "If you send me away, O lord, / you ought to answer properly one question asked by me.

The darśana of good people is never in vain, O god, / and especially yours; therefore I say this:

These terrible and exceedingly dreadful hells that are seen— / by what deed would a human go to which hell, O Yama?

How many in number are these hells, and of what measure? / You ought to tell all this truly, O best of gods!"

Yama said: / "Listen, O noble one, I shall tell how many hells exist, / and by what deed a human would go [there], O best of brahmins. / Twenty-one hells are proclaimed in my abode.

Those ungrateful, sin-laden ones whom you see, O brahmin, placed inside mechanical presses / and being tormented by my servants—

whose eyes iron-beaked crows gouge out— / those evil-minded ones looked upon

the wives of others with lust, O tiger among the twice-born, sinners always. / And now you see these sinners who have entered Kumbhīpāka:

they were engaged in false testimony and devoted to harsh speech. / Those who embrace these iron pillars glowing like fire,

those evil-minded ones were devoted to the wives of others. / Those who stand in the midst of the Vaitaraṇī, packed with pus and blood,

all of them are betrayers of trust, O best of the twice-born. / Those who are cut to pieces in the terrifying Asipatravana / ran away, abandoning their master when battle was joined.

The vile men who plunge into heaps of blazing charcoal / were devoted to treachery against their masters and were sophists.

Vile men, wailing, tread upon [ground] / strewn with iron spikes, O best of the twice-born, [because] they never gave the gift of shoes.

Those who are bound head-downwards at the top of a tree above fire / are all vile men guilty of killing a brahmin.

Those who are eaten by mosquitoes, bedbugs, crows, and birds / were devoted to breaking vows and harmed those observing vows.

Those whose throats are struck with axes are also of such a kind: / evil-minded slayers of cows and revilers of gods and brahmins.

Those who are devoured by jackals and wolves with iron jaws / are stealers of others' wealth and stealers of others' wives. / Those sinners who, starving, eat their own flesh,

never gave food, O best of brahmins. / Those who drink blood overflowing with fat and pus / always stood for the destruction of brahmins and cows.

Bound to the spiny Śālmali tree and pierced by sharp thorns, / they were constantly engaged in finding fault in others.

These who are cut with a saw, O best of brahmins, / were devoted to inedible food and defiled their own duty.

Those who sell maidens and those who ruin the lives of maidens / dwell in the midst of feces and are boiled by my servants.

Those whose tongues are repeatedly torn out with cruel pincers / were devoted to breach of words and dedicated to lying speech.

Those who are tormented by cold, trembling again and again, / are stealers of the property of gods, and especially of brahmins.

A heavy burden is placed on their heads, O best of brahmins; / therefore, O foremost of brahmins, they utter a terrible cry of distress."

Yama said: / "Thus all of this has been declared to you, O best of brahmins: / the nature of the hells and [the corresponding] deeds in proper order.

Go quickly, O fortunate one, before your body is cremated!"

The brahmin said: / "Tell me, attentive, O best of gods, / by what deed a human would never go to hell anywhere.

"Friendship of the virtuous is formed in seven steps," so say those skilled in intellect. / Honoring our friendship, you ought to speak in brief."

Yama said: / "Reaching the sacred field of Prabhāsa, whoever beholds with devotion / the supreme Narakeśvara, that person does not see hell.

That liṅga which was established by me, endowed with devotion to Śiva— / this secret has been spoken by me for your pleasure, O best of brahmins.

It should be concealed with care by my word, without doubt." / Thus addressed, the brahmin then went to the earth on his own.

Regaining his physical body, he experienced supreme astonishment. / Remembering all that speech of the wise Dharmarāja,

having gone there, he constantly worshipped that lord / for the rest of his life, O fair-hipped lady, and then attained supreme perfection.

Therefore, beholding it with devotion by every effort, / even a man burdened with sins does not go to hell.

Whoever performs an ancestral offering there according to the rules on the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight of Āśvayuja, / he obtains the fruit of an horse sacrifice.

The skin of a black antelope should be given there to a brahmin who has mastered the Vedas; / for as many sesamum seeds as there are, for that long he is honored in heaven.

Thus ends the two hundred and twenty-fifth chapter, entitled 'Description of the Māhātmya of Anarakeśvara', in the first [part], the Prabhāsakṣetramāhātmya, of the seventh [section], the Prabhāsakhaṇḍa, in the glorious Skandapurāṇa, a compendium of eighty-one thousand [verses].