Skandapurana 16.339

Īśvara said: / Then one should go, O great goddess, to the well renowned in the three worlds / on the charming bank of the Devikā, which fills up solely by the sound 'huṃ'. 1

Then, O spirited lady, the water goes back down below. / Formerly, one named Taṇḍī was settled on the bank of the Devikā; 2

devoted to devotion to Śiva, he performed austerity, O great goddess. / As he was thus performing austerity in that region, O fair-faced one, 3

an aged deer, blind of eye, came to that place, O beloved; / it fell into a vast, fathomless pit devoid of water. 4

Seeing it, that sage, filled with compassion, maintained silence / and uttered the sound 'huṃ' there again and again, O spirited lady. 5

Then, by the sound 'huṃ', that pit was filled up; / and then, O beloved, the deer came out with difficulty from the water. 6

Assuming a human form, it questioned that seer, / having experienced the greatest wonder, as to the fruit of the action that bestows wishes: 7

"I had fallen in the state of a deer, and have come forth having become a human!" / That best of the twice-born declared the māhātmya of that water: 8

"From this have I attained human nature; there is no other reason here." / Then that water entered once more into the depths of the earth. 9

Then, filled with curiosity, that seer uttered 'huṃ' again; / and the well was once more filled with water just as before. 7.1.339.10

Then he performed ritual ablution and also the libation to the ancestors; / considering it an excellent sacred ford, he attained the supreme state. 11

Even today, when 'huṃ' is uttered, a flood of water surges forth. / A man who goes there with devotion, even if addicted to sin, 12

does not obtain a rebirth as a human on the earth's surface. / Having bathed there and become purified, the man who performs a ancestral offering (śrāddha) 13

is freed from all sins and honored in the world of the ancestors; / he delivers seven ancestral lines, both past and future. 14

Thus ends the three hundred and thirty-ninth chapter, titled 'Description of the māhātmya of Huṃkārakūpa' in the māhātmya of Devikā, in the first [part], the Māhātmya of Prabhāsakṣetra, in the seventh [section], Prabhāsakhaṇḍa, of the Skandapurāṇa comprising eighty-one thousand verses. 339