Skandapurana 5.59

Sūta said: / In that sacred field, the Sun was previously installed by Vidura, / and Śiva, and likewise Viṣṇu, with supreme devotion, O best of brahmins.

The mortal who then worships them with devotion / shall go to the supreme abode, which is very difficult to attain even by sacrifices.

Long ago, O brahmins, Vidura, residing in Hastināpura, / questioned Gālava, the tiger among sages, who had come to his house:

"What kind of fate befalls one who is childless in the other world? / Tell this to me who am asking, having assumed the best of goodwill."

Gālava said: / "There is no fate in the hereafter for the childless; dead, he does not go to heaven / if there is not even one among the twelve [kinds of sons]:

the son of one's own body, the son of the wife, the bought son, the reared son, / the son of a remarried woman, the son given away again, the kuṇḍa, the gola, and another, / the son of an unmarried woman, the son received with a bride, and the aśvattha tree, the tree of Brahmā."

If not even one among these is born to men, / then surely dwelling in the hell named Put comes to pass.

Sūta said: / Hearing that speech of the noble Gālava, / Vidura was then plunged into great sorrow due to his childlessness.

Pained [by his grief], Gālava said to him: 'Do not go into a state of sorrow. / At my word, swiftly make a tree named Viṣṇu your son.

From that you will obtain the entire fruit arising from a son, / having gone to the most sacred region, on the summit of Raktaśṛṅga,

in the sacred field born of Hāṭakeśvara, where all prosperity and auspiciousness arise.' / Having heard his speech, Vidura departed at that very moment.

Filled with great joy, he went to that place indicated by Gālava. / Having planted an aśvattha tree there and consecrated it as a son,

he fulfilled his purpose through the marital rite. / Then he wandered through that sacred field, devoted to the pilgrimage of sacred fords.

Having heard of the marvelous places celebrated by noble royal seers, / he went and beheld the presiding deities of those places.

Having seen the celebrated works of the elder of the Kurus, the noble one, / he then set his mind on the work of building divine temples there.

Then, having installed a liṅga of Maheśvara beneath a banyan tree, / he also installed Viṣṇu beneath the aśvattha tree.

And having established that divine [shrine], he announced to the brahmins: / 'This triad of deities in the sacred field has indeed been established by me for you. / All care of it must always be undertaken by you.'

The brahmins said: / 'We shall perform all the rites for it, such as festivals and the like.

Likewise, our descendants, sons, grandsons, and others, / will perform all the rites. Go to your own home.'

Then Vidura, having achieved his purpose, went joyfully to his own city; / and those twice-born ones carried out the words spoken by him.

Whatever person worships the Sun there on the seventh day of the month of Māgha, / falling on a Sunday, goes to the highest state;

or [worships] Śiva on a Monday, especially on the bright eighth day; / [or worships] Viṣṇu on his sleeping and waking days, endowed with proper faith.

Therefore, with every effort, that auspicious triad of deities / should especially be worshipped by men desiring to attain heaven.

There, having worshipped Vidureśvara, sages of strict vows / formerly attained perfection by hundreds and by thousands.

Then, knowing that liṅga to be a bestower of perfection, Indra (Pākaśāsana) / covered it with dust so that no one would know of it.

After some time, however, Vidura arrived there; / seeing the liṅga vanished, he was overcome with great grief.

At that very moment, a bodiless voice said: / 'Vidura, do not despair now on account of the liṅga!

The young banyan tree that is seen here—at its base / lies the trough of the gods, filled with dust by the lord of the gods.'

Then, having swiftly brought much wealth from Hastināpura (Gajāhvaya), / he cleared that place day and night without sloth.

Then, having seen those gods, filled with great joy, / he constructed a suitable, well-built temple for them.

For the Sun, the great sage [built one] shaped like the peak of Kailāsa. / Seeing Maheśvara situated within the aerial roots of the banyan tree,

he did not construct a temple there, so as not to move the liṅga; / and having made a very large hall suitable for Vāsudeva,

and having granted a livelihood, overjoyed, he presented it to the brahmins; / then, having bid farewell to those vipras, he went back to his own hermitage.

Thus ends the fifty-ninth chapter, entitled 'Description of the Account of the Temple of the Gods Built by Vidura,' in the Māhātmya of the Sacred Field of Hāṭakeśvara in the Nāgarakhaṇḍa, the sixth [part] of the eighty-one-thousand-verse collection of the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa.