Skandapurana 16.6

The Goddess said: / Exceedingly wondrous is the māhātmya that has been related to me, O Mahādeva, / unprecedented, O Lord of the gods of gods, never heard by me before.

Tell [me], how is it that among the liṅgas in the universe praised by you to me, / the superiority in power belongs to Someśa?

What is the power of the sacred field, O Mahādeva, O Lord of the gods? / Speak that in its true nature before me, O Lord of the deities.

Īśvara said: / Hereafter I shall tell you the supreme secret, / the māhātmya of Prabhāsakṣetra and of Someśa, O fair-faced one:

It is the supreme sacred ford of sacred fords, the supreme vow of vows, / the supreme recitation of things to be recited, the highest meditation among meditations,

the supreme yoga of yogas, the supreme and great secret. / That I shall declare to you; listen with a single mind, my beloved.

Someśa is the supreme abode, endowed with five faces; / I never leave this liṅga: truly, truly this is spoken by me.

And that which is supreme, O Goddess, constant, imperishable, and immutable— / know that to be Someśa; do not be of wavering mind.

Fearless, stainless, eternal, devoid of desire, independent, / taintless, free from phenomenal expansion, unattached, free from afflictions—

know that liṅga to be firmly established in Prabhāsa: / liberation, unknowable, delightful to the mind, and free from disease;

eternal and the cause, the god who destroyed the sacrifice, facing in every direction, / Śiva, the soul of all, subtle, the primordial deity,

known through realization of the Self, devoid of thoughts of the mind, / freed from coming and going, purely outside and inside,

the domain of realization of the Self, beyond the range of praise, / partless, of pure essence, manifest, the lamp of knowledge—

know that to be the liṅga in Prabhāsa, O beautiful woman among the gods, / without lack of space, sound, and the object situated beyond sound.

Partless, stainless, the god of gods whose essence is the celestials, / devoid of cause and means of knowledge, free from mental construction and non-being,

the object observed by the mind, dwelling inside and outside: / know him in Prabhāsa as the Praṇava embodied as a liṅga.

Motionless, the Great Self, looking beyond [mundane] bliss, / standing on the path of observing the world, pure knowledge alone,

standing on the path of specialized knowledge, bearing many forms and designations, / to be grasped by meditation on one's own nature, transcending existence, devoid of attributes,

devoid of speech, phenomenal expansion, and the like, whose essence is beyond phenomenal proliferation, Śiva, / situated in the perception of knowledge and knower, free from fallacious reasonings,

the unstruck sound, inherent in sound, the source of the collection of sound and the rest— / know Someśvara thus in Prabhāsa embodied as a liṅga.

Attained to the sound-Brahman, tranquil, he is the resort of that which goes to the end of sound, / surpassing all objects, situated in the state of all meditation,

beginningless, unfailing, divine, an object transcending means of knowledge, / moving downwards and upwards, eternal, called the living soul, abiding in the body,

abiding from the heart to the twelve-finger breadth, the rising and setting of prāṇa and apāna, / ungraspable, the essence of the senses, spotless in nature, all-pervading,

beyond vowels, consonants, and the like, devoid of letters and the rest, / beyond the range of words, having the half-form of the ego-sense,

inconceivable, unutterable, devoid of calculation and time, / soundless, motionless, gentle, transcending the body, higher than the highest,

free from the possession of elements, devoid of existence and non-existence, / unknowable, supreme, subtle, the origin of the five-and-twenty [principles] and the like,

immeasurable, named the Infinite, imperishable, assuming form at will, / the origin of all beings, the sprout arising from the seed,

all-pervading, named all desires, imperishable, supreme, great, / abiding in the division of gross and subtle, manifest and unmanifest, eternal,

free from eons and dissolutions, beginningless and endless, great, / the great being, of immense body, Śiva, the Bhairava of ultimate liberation—

know Sadāśiva thus in Prabhāsa embodied as a liṅga, / entirely liberated from yogic actions, conqueror of death, beginningless,

free from all afflictions, all-pervading, Śiva, / unmanifest, eternally beyond, absolute, devoid of duality,

pervaded by peerless splendor, dwelling in the Prabhāsa kṣetra, / resembling an immense self-luminous glow, Hara surpassing all splendor,

the god who is a refuge, Īśāna, the syllable Oṃ, embodied as Śiva, / god of gods, Mahādeva, five-faced, with the bull on his banner,

spotless, transcending the mind, graspable by devotion, incomparable, / ever tranquil, odd-eyed, trident in hand, wearing matted locks,

abiding within the pericarp of the heart-lotus, having the form of the void, untainted— / know Sadāśiva thus in Prabhāsa embodied as a liṅga.

That god who is higher than the highest, renowned as the Haṃsa, / named Nāda, O goddess of good vows, is present in this place in person.

And this essential nature and the rest has been known by me through the power of yoga, / and declared, O goddess, as the divine Self by the self.

In the forenoon he abides in the Ṛgveda; at midday he resides in the Yajurveda; / in the afternoon in the Sāmaveda, and indeed in the Atharvaveda at the arrival of night.

“I know this great person, sun-colored, beyond darkness; / only by knowing him does death not occur; there is indeed no other path for people.”

Thus has the great power of the Someśa liṅga been declared to you in a single fraction; / it could not be completed even in many thousands of years, nor can it be spoken by anyone with [all their] mouths.

If a brahmin, kṣatriya, vaiśya, or even a śūdra recites this, / he is completely freed from all sins and attains all desires.

Thus ends the sixth chapter, named “Description of the Greatness of the Venerable Someśvara”, in the first [sub-section], the Māhātmya of the Prabhāsa Kṣetra, in the seventh Section, the Prabhāsakhaṇḍa, in the Mahāpurāṇa of Śrī Skanda, in the collection of eighty-one thousand [verses].