Skandapurana 16.70

Īśvara said: / ‘Then one should go, O Great Goddess, to the excellent Varuṇeśvara, / situated twenty bow-lengths southeast of Gaurī’s penance grove, / a liṅga of great power indeed, installed by Varuṇa.

Formerly, O goddess, when the ocean was drunk by the pot-born [Agastya], / then Varuṇa, the lord of rivers, was afflicted with wrath.

Recognizing the sacred field of Prabhāsa as fulfilling all desires, / he then performed most difficult austerity there, O goddess.

Having installed the great liṅga, he worshipped it with devotion; / for more than ten thousand years the bull-bannered [Śiva] was worshipped.

Then, being pleased, O ruler of gods, with the waters of his own Gaṅgā, / he filled that empty ocean, the lord of aquatic creatures.

He gratified that liṅga with many boons; / from that time onward, all those oceans were completely filled.

From that time forward, that liṅga came to be known by the name Varuṇeśvara.

For what need is there of many liṅgas seen, O beautiful lady among the gods? / When Varuṇeśa is seen, one obtains the fruit of all sacred fords.

If on the eighth or fourteenth [lunar day] one bathes it with curd, / he is born as a brahmin knowing the four Vedas, there is no doubt here.

Brahmins, kṣatriyas, vaiśyas, śūdras, and others, O lovely-faced one— / the mute, the blind, the deaf, children, women, and eunuchs—

having seen it, devoted to righteousness, they go to heaven, O goddess. / Bathing, chanting, sacrificial offering, oblations into fire, worship, praise, and dancing / that one performs in that place—all that becomes imperishable.

One should offer a golden lotus and a pearl as gifts in that very place, / a person desiring the full fruit of pilgrimage as well as heaven.’

Thus ends the seventieth chapter, named ‘Description of the Māhātmya of Varuṇeśvara,’ in the first [sub-section], Prabhāsakṣetramāhātmya, of the seventh section, Prabhāsakhaṇḍa, in the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa, a collection of eighty-one thousand [verses].