Shloka 206
Omens and Consolation after Loss; Reaffirmation of the Saindhava Punishment Vow (उत्पात-दर्शनम्, आश्वासन-वाक्यानि, प्रतिज्ञा-स्थैर्यम्)
अप्सु वर्षसहस्राणि सप्त चैक॑ च सानयत् । तात! इसके बाद दस हजार पद्म वर्षोतक वह मृगोंके साथ विचरती रही, फिर शीतल एवं निर्मल जलवाली पुण्यमयी नन्दानदीमें जाकर उसके जलमें उसने आठ हजार वर्ष व्यतीत किये
apsu varṣasahasrāṇi sapta caikaṃ ca sā nayat | tāta! tataḥ paraṃ daśa-sahasra-padma-varṣāṇi sā mṛgaiḥ saha vicaratī rahā | punaḥ śītala-nirmala-jala-vālī puṇya-mayī nandā-nadīṃ gatvā tasya jale sā aṣṭa-sahasra-varṣāṇi vyatītavatī |
Nārada said: “She spent seven thousand and one years in the waters. Then, my child, she wandered for a further period measured in tens of thousands of padma-years in the company of deer. After that, she went to the sacred Nandā River, whose waters are cool and pure, and there she passed eight thousand years within its stream.”
नारद उवाच
Educational Q&A
The passage emphasizes the moral and spiritual weight of time spent in purifying environments—waters, wilderness companionship, and a sacred river—suggesting that endurance, restraint, and contact with tīrtha-like purity are transformative and karmically significant.
Nārada recounts a sequence of extraordinarily long periods: first living in water, then roaming with deer, and finally dwelling in the cool, pure waters of the sacred Nandā River for eight thousand years—describing stages of a being’s prolonged sojourn and purification.