Adhyaya 163
This adhyāya is cast as Īśvara’s instruction (“Īśvara said”), guiding the seeker to a shrine lying to the east of the indicated point. There a liṅga named Nāsatyeśvara is identified and praised as a great remover of kalmaṣa—moral and ritual defilement—bestowing purification upon the pilgrim. The closing colophon places the chapter within the 81,000-verse Skanda Purāṇa, in the seventh division (Prabhāsa Khaṇḍa) and the first subsection (Prabhāsakṣetramāhātmya), and states its topic as the māhātmya narration of Nāsatyeśvara and Aśvineśvara. The chapter thus serves as a concise unit of sacred-geographic indexing, linking direction of pilgrimage, shrine nomenclature, and the promise of cleansing in the manner of sthala-māhātmya literature.
Shlokas
Verse 1
ईश्वर उवाच । ततो गच्छेन्महादेवि तस्मात्पूर्वेण संस्थितम् । नासत्येश्वरनामानं महा कल्मषनाशनम्
Īśvara said: Then, O Great Goddess, one should go to the shrine situated to the east of that place, known as Nāsatyeśvara, the destroyer of great defilement.
Verse 163
इति श्रीस्कांदे महापुराण एकाशीतिसाहस्र्यां संहितायां सप्तमे प्रभासखंडे प्रथमे प्रभासक्षेत्रमाहात्म्ये नासत्येश्वराश्विनेश्वरमाहात्म्यवर्णनंनाम त्रिषष्ट्युत्तरशततमोऽध्यायः
Thus, in the holy Skanda Mahāpurāṇa, within the Saṃhitā of eighty-one thousand verses, in the seventh Prabhāsa Khaṇḍa, in the first subdivision, the Prabhāsa Kṣetra Māhātmya, ends the chapter entitled “The Account of the Greatness of Nāsatyeśvara and Aśvineśvara,” being Chapter 163.