Adhyaya 106

Śucismitā asks how eating or merely touching vibhūti (sacred ash) can lengthen life and secure a blessed fate after death. Dadhīca answers with an “ancient legend” connected with Citragupta and Yama. A learned brāhmaṇa falls into sexual transgression; later he worships Śiva and many sins are destroyed. Yet he commits a separate offense—consuming ghee from Śiva’s lamp—whose karmic residue is declared unusually enduring. Yama sentences him to hell and to repeated births as a dog. His wife Avyayā, guided by Nārada, undertakes a fire-entry rite as expiation and testimony of fidelity; she attains heaven, while the brāhmaṇa’s remaining sin persists. In the end, as a dog he dies after falling into consecrated ash near Dadhīca’s abode; by Śiva’s command, devotees who die in or through vibhūti are not subject to Yama, and the dog is brought to Śiva and admitted among the gaṇas.