Adhyaya 186

Chapter 186 exalts Kolhāpura as a supreme Śakti-seat that grants both worldly enjoyment and liberation, praising its splendor and the virtue of its people. It is presented as an eminent tīrtha where devotion bears swift fruit. An unnamed prince arrives seeking Śrī Mahālakṣmī. After bathing and performing ancestral rites, he offers an extended hymn to the Devī, weaving together cosmic functions of creation, preservation, and dissolution with yogic inwardness—cakras, nāda-bindu-kalā—and her many manifestations. Pleased, Mahālakṣmī sends him to the brāhmaṇa siddha Siddha-samādhi. The siddha compels the devas to return a stolen Aśvamedha horse and later revives the prince’s father, King Bṛhadratha, whose body had been dried by heated oil. Asked the source of such power, he declares it arises from ceaseless recitation of Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 12, affirming bhakti-recitation as a direct cause of siddhi and mokṣa.