Skandapurana 6.3.125

Chapter 125

Glorious Mārkaṇḍeya said: / Then one should go, O ruler of the earth, to the unsurpassed Ravitīrtha, / where the thousand-rayed god, having performed austerity, went to heaven.

Yudhiṣṭhira said: / How does the god, the creator of the world, bowed to by all deities, / the lord of gods, the ascetic, the light-maker, Ravi, perform austerity?

He is to be propitiated by all beings, worshipped by all deities, / seen visibly in the world, the cause of creation and destruction.

How did he attain status as Āditya? How is he called Bhāskara? / Tell me all this in brief, O sinless one.

Mārkaṇḍeya said: / This is a great question, O great king, which has been asked by you; / having bowed to the self-born one, I shall tell all of that.

This [universe] was enveloped in darkness, unperceived, devoid of distinguishing marks, / inconceivable, unknowable, as if completely asleep everywhere.

Then [emerged] divine brilliance, an unsurpassed heated mass, / falling headlong from the sky for the sake of creation, just like a meteor.

Within that brilliance arose the Puruṣa, adorned with all [ornaments]; / he is auspicious, without hands and feet, by whom all this is pervaded.

From that being of fiery form who had arisen, O descendant of Bharata, / afterwards Prajāpati [came forth], and then Time through the course of time.

He became the fire of creatures, of humans, asuras, and rākṣasas; / he is the supreme deity of all gods, and therefore he is called Āditya.

At the beginning, salutation is made to him, and after that to the others, / by all deities and therefore by all great seers.

The three twilights and the three gods have their presence in the solar orb; / when the sun has been bowed down to, all gods have been bowed down to.

There would be no day, no night, no six months of the southern course, / nor the northern course, O king, without the light-maker.

Ablution, giving, recitation, oblation, Vedic study, and worship of deities / do not exist without the sun; therefore Ravi is most worthy of worship.

Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Maheśvara are conveyed through words and chief in the Vedas, / [but] the visible lord, the god, the purifier of the worlds, is seen [as the sun].

The origin, the place of dissolution, the receptacle, the imperishable seed, / the sole cause, the lord of the world—none other than the light-maker is known.

Having thus made the world of moving and unmoving beings born from himself, / he established the path of dharma for the welfare of the worlds.

Resorting to the bank of the Narmadā, having established his own body / as the thousand-rayed one, the storehouse of splendours, he went to imperishable space.

Whoever, having bathed at that sacred ford, worships the supreme lord, / the thousand-rayed god, according to the rules of name and mantra—

By him has austerity been performed, by him has oblation been offered, by him has everything been accomplished; / by him, through the correct procedure, the supreme abode has been attained.

Blessed are they, great-souled are they, well-lived is the life of those / who, having bathed in the waters of the Narmadā, behold the sun-god.

Likewise, O best of kings, those who circumambulate the god / constantly with undivided devotion, endowed with the three syllables,

their bodies purified by that mantra, their sins dispelled— / what merit accrues to them, hear that here with an attentive mind.

By him has the entire earth, with its oceans and caves, / with its mountains, forests, and woods, been circumambulated; of this there is no doubt.

All this threefold world, with the moving and the unmoving, is rooted in mantras. / Therefore, an action lacking a mantra is not accomplished in this world.

Just as a wooden elephant or a leather deer / cannot accomplish any practical purpose, so indeed is a rite performed without a mantra.

Just as an oblation poured into ashes, O Pārtha, or a gift given without water, / becomes fruitless, so too is a gift devoid of a mantra.

In figures of wood, stone, clods of earth, and especially of clay, / people in this world worship with a mantra, never indeed without a mantra.

The fruit one obtains from prostration with devotion for twelve years, / one obtains all at once from a single prostration joined with a mantra.

At a solstice, at a vyatīpāta, at the sun's passage, or at an equinox, / he who bathes in the water of the Narmadā and worships the sun,

whatever sin has been accumulated through ignorance or knowledge over twelve years / is completely destroyed in an instant, like chaff by fire.

Having bathed during an eclipse of the moon or the sun, fasting and with senses controlled, / beholding the face of the sun there, he is freed from all sins.

When the month of Māgha arrives, on the seventh day, O best of kings, / fasting, with anger conquered, having stayed in the temple of the sun,

bathing at dawn according to rule and offering an arghya to the sun / according to the rite endowed with a mantra, he attains supreme merit.

Having performed the water-tarpaṇa for the ancestors, gods, and men, / he should then perform worship in the temple of the god of gods.

Having worshipped the Lord of the World with perfumes, flowers, incenses, / and splendid lamps and food-offerings, he should then utter the mantra:

“Viṣṇu, Śakra, Yama, Dhātṛ, Mitra, and Varuṇa; / Vivasvant, Savitṛ, Pūṣan, Caṇḍāṃśu, and Bharga.”

Reciting these twelve names and performing circumambulation, / what fruit one obtains, O Pārtha, hear that here with an attentive mind.

He will not be poor, diseased, mute, deaf, or dull / for seven births; thus indeed spoke Śaṃkara.

Knowing this, repeating the mantra according to the rite, the wise man / who desires supreme merit should worship the sun with devotion.

He who offers devotion to the god devoid of mantras, O Bhārata, / merely mocks himself like a beast, a worm, or a moth.

Whoever abandons his excellent body at that sacred ford, / having gone there, being worshipped by gods and great seers,

by his own will for a very long time, will become a king in this world.

Joined with sons and grandsons, crowded with elephants, horses, and chariots, / attended by hundreds of female and male servants, he is born in an exalted family.

Thus ends the one hundred and twenty-fifth chapter, named the Description of the Māhātmya of Ravitīrtha, in the Revākhaṇḍa of the fifth Avantī section in the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa, in the compilation of eighty-one thousand [verses].