Skandapurana 5.146

Sūta said:
Likewise, there is another god there who grants sons to men,
named Vaṭikeśvara, Hara who removes all sins;

where formerly, O best of the twice-born, austerity was performed by Vaṭikā,
who obtained a son, Kapiñjala, from Vyāsa when Śuka had departed to the forest.

The seers said:
Whose [daughter or wife] was that Vaṭikā there? How did she perform austerity?
For what reason did Śuka also abandon home and resort to the forest?

How did that fair-smiling woman obtain a son, Kapiñjala, from Vyāsa?

Sūta said:
O foremost among brahmins, at one time Vyāsa, who was desireless, tranquil,
omniscient, and great-souled, turned his mind toward [taking] a wife.

Then, when the lineage sprung from Kuru had met destruction,
after King Vicitravīrya [perished], O best of the twice-born,

at the command of Satyavatī, in his field [his wives], thereafter
he fathered three heroic sons, beginning with Pāṇḍu,

abiding by the vow of a forest-dweller, engaged in union only once.
When the lineage of Kuru was thus sustained by those sons born of the field,

he then thought: "Now I shall take a wife,
and through the duty of a householder I shall attain an auspicious destination."

Then he asked Jābāli for his auspicious daughter. / He quickly gave him the auspicious maiden named Vaṭikā.

Then, together with her, he took up residence in the forest, / staying in the hermitage of the forest-dweller stage of life, devoted to performing intercourse.

Then the tawny-eyed woman became pregnant by him; / having experienced pleasure in her fertile period from Vyāsa, the son of Satyavatī,

that embryo staying there attained great growth / in the womb of Vyāsa's wife, like the moon in the bright fortnight.

As that embryo continuously grew in this manner, / twelve years passed, yet it did not take birth.

Whatever words he heard anywhere while remaining in the womb, / he, endowed with great intellect, kept them all in his heart.

Even while residing in the womb, he fully studied / the Vedas with their auxiliary limbs, the Smṛtis, the Purāṇas, and the treatises on liberation.

Staying there, he recited the sacred texts day and night, / and he did not even think of taking birth in any way.

The mother too suffered great torment constantly, thus distressed, / as he grew larger and larger within her womb.

Then Vyāsa, filled with wonder, spoke [these] words: / "Who are you, who have entered my wife's womb in the form of an embryo?

Why do you not come out? Will you kill her?" / The embryo said: / "I have been a rākṣasa, a piśāca, a deva, and likewise a human.

I have been an elephant, a horse, a cock, and a goat. / Numbering eighty-four hundred thousand wombs,

I have wandered through them all; so who am I? What can I say? / Now, having become human, I have entered a womb.

I will not make human life desireless in any way; / therefore, weary from wandering in this terrible cycle of worldly existence,

freed from worldly existence while staying here, always devoted to the practice of yoga, / I shall surely attain the path of liberation from this place—liberation without doubt.

Knowledge, dispassion, and recollection of previous births / remain only as long as every living creature stays in the womb, O best of brahmins.

When one emerges from the womb, touched by Viṣṇu's māyā, / then it immediately perishes; this is true without doubt.

Therefore, O best of brahmins, I will not come out by any means; / from this womb, from this place, I will surely attain liberation without doubt."

Vyāsa said: / "That Vaiṣṇava māyā will not affect you in any way. / Come out from this very terrible, condemned hell.

From residing in the womb, take refuge in yoga and attain what is auspicious. / Therefore, show me your face, so that by seeing your face / I may be freed from my debt to the world of the ancestors."

The embryo said: / "If you give me Vāsudeva as a guarantor, / only then will my birth take place by myself now, not otherwise, O brahmin."

Sūta said: / Then Vyāsa, sorrowful, went quickly to Dvārakā, / and told the whole matter in detail to the wielder of the discus.

Accompanied by him, Vyāsa then returned to his own home / to give him the immaculate Viṣṇu as a guarantor.

The venerable Kṛṣṇa said: / "I am your guarantor against the destruction caused by māyā upon your emergence. / Having come out at my word, go to unexcelled liberation."

Then, O brahmins, at the word of Viṣṇu, he quickly came out, / twelve years old in stature and approaching youth.

Then, having bowed to the enemy of the Daityas, to Vyāsa, and likewise to his mother, / that son of Vyāsa immediately set out to live in the forest.

Then that sage said to him, "Stay in your own house, son, / so that I may perform the life-cycle rites for you, beginning with the birth ritual."

The child said: / "Hundreds of life-cycle rites have been performed for me in birth after birth, / through which, having the nature of bonds, I have been thrown into the ocean of worldly existence."

The Blessed One said: / "Since this son of yours prattles like a parrot, O sage, / therefore let him be Śuka by name, skilled in the science of yoga.

He will not stay in his mansion, being free from delusion and māyā. / Therefore, let him go; do not form an attachment to him.

I shall go home; you are freed from the ancestral debt / merely by seeing your son; this that I have spoken is true."

Having spoken thus and quickly taken leave of Vyāsa, Hṛṣīkeśa, / mounted on the king of birds, departed for Dvārakā.

Then, when Hṛṣīkeśa had gone, Vyāsa indeed said to his son, / who had set out to dwell in the forest and had no attachment to his own home:

Vyāsa said: / "The father's command is destroyed for those devoid of the duties of a householder. / But whoever, through delusion, does not properly follow his father's command / goes to hell; therefore, at my word, son, do not go."

Śuka said: / "Just as I am born from you today, so you in another birth / were born from me, O best of sages; thus I too am your father.

Therefore you must obey my word, if this is the established rule of dharma. / I must not be forbidden as I go to the forest of austerities."

Vyāsa said: / "Birth in the house of a brahmin is attained by men through merits; / having received in it the rites prescribed in the Veda, one attains the state of a sage."

Śuka said: / "If liberation is attained through life-cycle rites without good action, / then even heretics observing vows would attain liberation.

Vyāsa said: / "One should first be a student, and after that a householder; / then a forest-dweller, and then an ascetic; thereby one would attain liberation."

Śuka said: / "If liberation came through celibacy, then eunuchs would always have it. / If it belonged to those in the householder's stage, then the entire world would be liberated.

Or, if [it comes] to those delighting in the forest, then it would happen to wild beasts.

Or if liberation belonged to mortals who observe the duties of an ascetic, / then liberation would belong first of all to the poor.

Vyāsa said: / For men delighted in the duties of a householder and walking on the virtuous path, / this world and also the next have been declared by Manu.

Śrī Śuka said: / For those who are well hidden within the prison of the home, bound by the bonds of kinsmen, / absorbed in delusion and passion, how can there be journeying on the virtuous path?

Vyāsa said: / Miserable is it for a man living constantly in the forest here, and not only does it spring from one's own body; / but the rites for the gods and all those for the ancestors do not shine forth; therefore, dwelling at home, one should reflect on the welfare of the self.

Śrī Śukadeva said: / For sages of great austerity refined by meditation, all the fruits of austerity remain, / since those men, having daylight for their shelter, never look upon the faces of wicked people—that alone is happiness.

Vyāsa said: / A home and family for men who observe the duty of the householder's stage of life / grant perpetual happiness both in this world and in the next.

Śrī Śuka said: / Even cold might arise from fire through the play of fate, or heat even from the moon; / but happiness arising from possessions and family in this mortal world never was, is not, and will not be.

Vyāsa said: / Human birth, rare on earth, is attained with difficulty through great merits; / when that is attained, what has not been attained if one knows the duty of a householder?

Śrī Śukadeva said: / Even if a man here were endowed with knowledge at the time of birth, / upon beholding his own condition, that knowledge indeed dissolves.

Vyāsa said: / Even of a son, or a donkey, or an infant / playing in the dust, the sound of one crying out brings joy to a person.

Śrī Śuka said: / With an infant screaming, crawling, rolling in dust, and filthy for a long time, / O sage, a person here finds pleasure—such a fool is he!

Vyāsa said: / There is a terrible hell named Put in the abode of Yama; / one without a son goes there; therefore a son is praised.

Śrī Śuka said: / If heaven came from having a son, O great sage, it would belong to all— / especially to pigs, dogs, and locusts.

Vyāsa said: / From the sight of a son, a mortal becomes free from debt to the ancestors; / from a grandson, to the gods; and from a great-grandson, he finds an abode in heaven.

Śuka said: / A vulture lives long and beholds its own progeny / continually in succession; does it not attain liberation?

Sūta said: / Having spoken thus, he abandoned his father and his mother, / who was afflicted with great sorrow and lamenting in many ways, and went to the forest.

Seeing him [leave], Vyāsa, grieved, hopeless of seeing his son again / and consumed by grief for his son, remained with his wife.

Thus ends the one hundred forty-seventh chapter, named 'Description of the Dialogue of Vyāsa and Śuka', in the Nāgarakhaṇḍa, the sixth [part] of the auspicious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa, a collection of eighty-one thousand [verses], in the description of the glorious Hāṭakeśvarakṣetra. // 147