Skandapurana 6.3.23

Chapter 23

Mārkaṇḍeya said: / Right at that confluence, O king, with supreme devotion, / mortals who abandon their life-breaths go to the supreme state.

One who renounces all desires and abandons his life-breaths, / having reached Amareśvara, shall dwell forever in heaven.

A man who approaches the lord of mountains and releases himself / goes to Amarāvatī in an aerial chariot resembling the sun.

Beholding a man falling from Mount Amarakaṇṭaka, / all the apsarases say, "May he become my husband!"

Those who know dharma say that the water belonging to Sarasvatī and the water of Gaṅgā are equal, so say the enlightened; / those who know proclaim that the water of Revā is superior to that—there is no doubt about this.

Inhabited by numerous vidyādharas, kinnaras, and others with most sacred abodes, / for one who carries the water of Revā on his head, his place is near the sovereign of the gods.

The Narmadā is always to be resorted to; what is the use of speaking much, O king, / if one wishes not to see again the terrible ocean of cyclic existence?

She is remembered as the great purifier of all three worlds. / Wherever one dies [on her banks], a state among the attendants of Śiva is certain.

Her body is surrounded by numerous sacrificial sanctuaries; indeed, there is nothing here that is not a sacred ford. / As for what was said by you regarding her bank, whether ascetics or non-ascetics,

men who die, even if they have committed sins, go to heaven like the lords of the immortals.

In this way both the Kapilā and the Viśalyā, O best of kings, / were created in ancient times by Īśvara out of a desire for the welfare of the worlds.

Having bathed there, O king, fasting and having restrained his senses, / a man without doubt obtains the fruit of the great horse sacrifice.

And whoever undertakes a fast unto death at that sacred ford, O ruler of men, / freed from all sins, goes indeed to Śiva's abode.

Whatever fruit is attained by bathing and giving gifts on the earth up to the ocean, / one obtains that fruit merely by bathing once at the confluence of the Viśalyā.

Thus has this sacred and purifying [stream] been told to you, O lord of the earth. / Whatever you ask me further, that too I shall relate.

Thus ends the twenty-third chapter, entitled 'Description of the Māhātmya of the Viśalyā Confluence', in the Revākhaṇḍa of the Āvantyakhaṇḍa, the fifth [part] of the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa, in the collection of eighty-one thousand [verses].