Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c9.3105

c9.3105

When Nārada got up from the lake Mahāviṣṇu was still standing near his violin and deer-skin smiling at him. The sight of Viṣṇu gave him knowledge of all that had happened. He stood there recounting in his memory how he had requested Viṣṇu to show him Māyā and how he had taken a bath in that lake and how he had spent a long period of married life ending in misery and how Viṣṇu had come to her in the form of an old brahmin when she had cried to him in agony and how the old brahmin had taken her and Tāladhvaja to the lake again and how he had become his old self again. He stood there still pondering over these when Viṣṇu called him and said “Come on Nārada, how slow you are. Finish your bath and come soon. What are you thinking about?” Tāladhvaja, however, was unmoved by any of these. He was puzzled to find a bearded Sannyāsī rising up from the place where his beautiful wife had dipped herself for a bath. He went to Nārada and asked “Oh best of sages, where is my wife who has just dipped herself in this same place? From where do you come?” Even before waiting to hear a reply from the King began to make a hue and cry about the loss of his wife. Then Mahāviṣṇu went to him and consoled him by saying with illustrations that ‘human ties are only ephemeral’ and asked him to take a bath in the lake. Tāladhvaja after his bath became disgusted with life and after doing penance in the forests attained mokṣa. (8th Skandha, Devī Bhāgavata).