BHIMASHANKAR

Once, while he was going about his way through the Patala or the Yamaloka, he heard strange moaning sounds. He recognised them as human voices and went about enquiring as to where from they came. Nearby he found a dark pit, deep as a well, where in a number of persons were seen standing in mid-air, without any visible support. They were wailing most sorrowfully. it was indeed a pit; able sight. Richika asked them the cause of their distress, whereupon he was told that they belonged to a single family, and their living descendant was a brahmachari.

He naturally had no issue and on that count they could not attain moksha. The young mendicant felt sorry for them and tried to console them with some philosophical discourses. The men in the pit were not quite enthusiastic about it and asked him who he was. The reply was ‘Richika’. "Oh, then you are your self our curse! Richika, we are your own ancestors, Oh child why have you put us to this agony?" This was too great a shock to the young fellow, and he swooned of it. When he came to, they advised him not to curse himself but to approach the sage Kaushika at the famous kshetra of Bhimashankar.

That sage would certainly show him a way out. It was thus that Richika had come to the ashram of the venerated sage. The old man took pity on the young fellow, dug, a small kund in front of his ashram and poured some water in it from his kamandalu. Under standing full well the significance of this kund Bhimarathi rushed to the spot and soon it was overflowing. Kaushika then asked Richika to bathe himself in that kund and perform the shraddha rites of his forefathers. He did accordingly and his ancestors received moksha. The kund has retained this efficacy to this day !

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