Skandapurana 16.221

English (machine translation) 16.221

Language: English

16.221.1

Īśvara said: / Then, O great goddess, one should go to the god Ṛṇamocana; / when he is seen, there would be no debt originating from mother or father.

16.221.2

Formerly all the ancestors came to the divine sacred field; / engaged in austerity in Prabhāsa, they remained for many groups of years.

16.221.3

The Agniṣvāttas, the Barhiṣads, the Somapas, and the Ājyapas, / all dedicated to devotion, established a liṅga.

16.221.4

Then, after a great length of time, the Great Lord was pleased with them; / then, having become visible, he spoke these words:

16.221.5

'I am well pleased; hail to you! State what is desired by your mind.'

16.221.6

The ancestors said: / 'Let livelihood be given to us in this world created by you yourself, / and [livelihood] of the gods, the seers, and mortals on the earth.

16.221.7

You alone are supreme in the world of all, O lotus-born one. / Whosoever among the four classes coming here endowed with faith—

16.221.8

may they be freed from the ancestral debt, their blemishes gone!
O best of gods, [for those] whose ancestors have become ghosts,

16.221.9

or whose grandfathers met destruction by snakes, fire, or poisons,
whether childless or having sons, without the sapiṇḍīkaraṇa ritual,

16.221.10

for whom the sixteen single-purpose śrāddhas were not performed before,
nor likewise the release of a bull, or who were killed by cows or by outcasts,

16.221.11

or others who died deprived of purification—
may all of them, propitiated here with water offerings, attain the highest state!"

16.221.12

The Blessed Lord said:
"Having bathed in the holy water and offered water to the ancestors,
those men devoted to piety toward their ancestors

16.221.13

shall have me granting them a boon: I will deliver at that very instant
all their ancestors without doubt, even if shrouded by hundreds of sins.

16.221.14

A man who bathes in this sacred ford and worships the liṅga,
the liṅga installed by you, is freed from the ancestral debt.

16.221.15

Because one is released from debt by the darśana of this liṅga,
therefore it has been named Ṛṇamocana by me."

16.221.16

Īśvara said:
"He who places gold upon his head and bathes at Ṛṇamocana
has truly delivered himself, and the gift of a hundred cows is accomplished [by him].

16.221.17

Having spoken thus, the Blessed Lord vanished right there.
Therefore, with every effort one should perform a śrāddha there,
and worship that liṅga dear to the gods, the pitṛliṅga, O great goddess."

Thus ends the two hundred and twenty-first chapter, entitled 'Description of the Glory of Ṛṇamocana,' in the First [sub-section], the Prabhāsakṣetramāhātmya, of the Seventh Prabhāsakhaṇḍa in the glorious Skanda Mahāpurāṇa, a compendium of eighty-one thousand [verses].

Linked texts (1)

Skandapurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit