Skandapurana 5.136

The seers said: / 'By whom was this tiger among sages, Māṇḍavya, of great austerity, / placed upon the spike, and for what reason? Tell us.'

Sūta said: / 'Formerly, that sage Māṇḍavya, undertaking a pilgrimage to sacred fords, / arrived in this sacred field endowed with the highest faith.

Having reached the great and purifying true sacred ford of Viśvāmitra, / that observer of vows performed the libation to the ancestors facing the Sun,

reciting the excellent hymn beginning with "vibhrāṭ", dear to the Sun. / Meanwhile, a certain thief carrying stolen goods

came there, pursued closely from behind by people, O twice-born. / Then the thief too, seeing that best of sages observing silence,

dropped the stolen goods in front of him and entered inside a cave. / Meanwhile, those people arrived in pursuit of the stolen goods.

Seeing the stolen goods lying in front of him, they said to that eminent sage: / "A thief with stolen goods in hand came by this path. / Tell us quickly, O fortunate one, by which path did he escape?"'

And although the wise [sage] knew that the thief was inside the cave, / committed to his vow of silence, he said nothing at all.

Though questioned repeatedly, engaged in supreme contemplation, / he said nothing, thereby protecting the thief's life.

Then they all conferred among themselves: “This is surely the thief! / Followed by us, he has assumed the form of a sage.”

Then, without deliberating, all those wicked cowherds / took him a short distance into another part of the forest and immediately impaled him upon a stake.

Thus the dreadful stake was received then by that wise sage, / free from fault, through the ripening of past deeds.

Thus ends the one hundred thirty-seventh chapter, entitled “Description of the Event of Māṇḍavya’s Impalement,” in the Nāgarakhaṇḍa, the sixth [part] of the Māhātmya of the Hāṭakeśvara Sacred Field, in the eighty-one-thousand-verse collection of the glorious Skanda Purāṇa.