Shloka 35
Matsya Purana — Vrata-Ṣaṣṭhī: The Sixty Sacred Vows
वर्जयित्वा पुमान्मांसम् अब्दान्ते गोप्रदो भवेत् तद्वद्धेममृगं दद्यात् सोऽश्वमेधफलं लभेत् अहिंसाव्रतमित्युक्तं कल्पान्ते भूपतिर्भवेत् //
varjayitvā pumānmāṃsam abdānte goprado bhavet tadvaddhemamṛgaṃ dadyāt so'śvamedhaphalaṃ labhet ahiṃsāvratamityuktaṃ kalpānte bhūpatirbhavet //
Having abstained from meat, a man should, at the end of the year, become a giver of cows. Likewise, he should donate a golden deer; by that he attains the fruit of the Aśvamedha sacrifice. This is declared to be the ahiṃsā-vrata, the vow of non-violence; at the end of the aeon he becomes a lord of the earth.
FAQs
It does not describe Pralaya directly; it uses long-cycle time (“kalpānte,” end of an aeon) to state the karmic culmination of an ahiṃsā-vrata—attaining sovereignty as a final merit-result.
It frames a householder-style discipline: abstaining from meat (ethical restraint) and completing it with prescribed charity (go-dāna and a symbolic gift). The teaching links personal conduct and generosity to royal merit and future rulership.
Ritually, it presents a non-violent vrata and donations as a merit-equivalent to the Aśvamedha, highlighting a Purāṇic pattern of substituting inner ethics and dāna for large-scale sacrificial rites; no Vāstu or temple-architecture rule is stated.