The Skanda Purana

by G. V. Tagare | 1950 | 2,545,880 words

This page describes Greatness of Jambavati Nadi (River) which is chapter 231 of the English translation of the Skanda Purana, the largest of the eighteen Mahapuranas, preserving the ancient Indian society and Hindu traditions in an encyclopedic format, detailling on topics such as dharma (virtous lifestyle), cosmogony (creation of the universe), mythology (itihasa), genealogy (vamsha) etc. This is the two hundred thirty-first chapter of the Prabhasa-kshetra-mahatmya of the Prabhasa Khanda of the Skanda Purana.

Chapter 231 - Greatness of Jāmbavatī Nadī (River)

[Sanskrit text for this chapter is available]

Īśvara said:

1-4. Thereafter, a pilgrim should go to the spot where the Jāmbavatī river flows.

Formerly the favourite crowned queen of Viṣṇu (Kṛṣṇa), the chaste lady named Jāmbavatī, asked Arjuna, “O scion of the family of Kurus, tell me the news.”

On hearing her words, Arjuna heaved sighs again and again and said with words choked with tears. He said: “O fair lady, we have been abandoned by the noble-souled Yādavas, the heroic Baladeva, the noble-souled Sātyaki and other Yādava heroes. I have been dismissed by Vāsudeva and am a hardhearted sinner. I have come here to keep alive somehow.”

5-8. The great chaste lady heard the (news of) death of her husband from Arjuna, flashing like fire. She kindled the funeral pyre on the banks of Gaṅgā. She abandoned her gross body and issued forth in the form of a river. Then the holy Jāmbavatī gathered all the ashes of her husband from the funeral pyre and entered the ocean.

O goddess of Devas, if a woman devoutly takes her holy bath there, no woman in her family shall ever face widowhood.

Hence one, whether man or woman, should assiduously bathe there (in the river). He or she attains the greatest goal.

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