Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c8.1411

c8.1411

3) Previous birth of Naraka. Long ago a king who was the father of Sixteen thousand daughters, ruled over a country. While the father and daughters were sitting in the palace Mahāviṣṇu came there as a hermit. The sixteen thousand damsels gathered round the hermit. Their father got angry and cursed them. The daughters shed tears and entreated their father for liberation from the curse. He gave them remission and said that in the next birth they would become wives of Mahāviṣṇu. Another version of this story says that the damsels had requested Brahmā for liberation from the curse according to the advice of the hermit Nārada, and that Brahmā had given them liberation from the curse. In some versions it is stated that Nārada himself gave them liberation from the curse.