Skandapurana 5.111

Sūta said: / Then, after a few days had passed when that king, / afflicted with sorrow, had departed toward his home along with his retinue,

the sixty-eight best brahmins arrived on foot, / exhausted, their bodies emaciated, and their faces gray with dust.

When [each] looked, [he saw] his wives adorned with divine ornaments, / beautifully clad in divine garments, like other queens.

Then, seized with astonishment, hungry as they were, they asked: / “What is this? What is this, sinful women? Why have your bodies been made improper?

How were these garments and fine ornaments obtained? / Surely our power to travel in the sky has been lost; it cannot be otherwise.

Abandon this transformation of yours, utterly contemptible women!” / Then those wives of the ascetics told the entire account:

how Queen Damayantī, the king's beloved, had arrived, / and how, O twice-born, the ornaments had been given by her;

and how the curse of the high-souled brahmins had occurred. / Then those sages, enraged upon hearing those despicable words, [thought:] / “Accepting gifts from a king is blameworthy, especially for ascetics.”

Then, to destroy the king and his realm, they took up water, / seized by great anger, trembling unrestrainedly:

“By this wicked man, this evil king, our movement / in the sky has been destroyed, having seduced our wives who were artless / and straightforward, together with all their companions, whereby such a calamity has occurred!”

Sūta said: / While those sages were just about to pronounce / the curse upon that king, their wives, filled with anger, said to them:

“The curse must not be given to that king, O best of brahmins! / First, our words should be heard by you without doubt.

All of us were adorned by the king's wife / with fine garments and divine ornaments with a heart purified by faith.

Dwelling constantly in your home through the fault of poverty, / we have been emaciated, and no earthly happiness has been attained [by us].

For those who are devoted to austerity here, the other world exists; / there is not even the slightest earthly fruit for them.

For other people who dwell in worldly pleasures, this world is proclaimed, / for those vile, exceedingly wicked people whose minds are attached to enjoyment.

For householders whose minds are devoted to their own duty, / there is both this world and the next; of this there is no doubt.

So we, having practiced the excellent householder stage of life—there is no doubt about this— / shall attain both peerless worlds.

Therefore, with collected minds, declare [your desire for] delightful houses, / having taken land and the desired livelihood from the king!

And then behold the happiness arising from sons and grandsons, / as well as of unmarried daughters, and especially of kinsmen!

If you do not carry out this speech uttered by us, / all of us will abandon our lives, there is no doubt.

Then, being joined with the sin of killing women, / you will most certainly go to the terrible Raurava hell!”

When those sages heard those words of theirs, / they cast onto the surface of the earth the water that was held in their hands for the curse.

Then that portion of the earth scorched by that water, / O best of the twice-born, became barren land even to this day.

Leaving aside grain and the like, whatever is sown there does not sprout; / neither bird nor insect attains rebirth there,

nor grass nor deer there—how much less a devout man? / A man who performs a śrāddha there with faith in the month of Phālguna,

on the full moon day on a Sunday, delivers his ancestors, / even if they have arrived in terrible hell on account of their own deeds.

Thus ends the one hundred and twelfth chapter, entitled 'Narration of the Māhātmya of the Origin of the Saline Land in the Episode of Damayantī,' in the Māhātmya of Hāṭakeśvara Kṣetra, in the Nāgarakhaṇḍa, the sixth [section], in the Skanda Mahāpurāṇa consisting of eighty-one thousand verses.