“Now you have the explanation for what you saw,” said Kunjala.

Kunjala

I hope you have not forgotten that the sage Chyavana had overhead all of this, sitting under the banyan tree.

He now addressed Kunjala. “Padron me for interrupting.” Said Chyavana. “But how came you to be so learned?”

“I shall tell you my story,” replied Kunjala.

There was a learned brahmana named Vidyadhara. He had three sons, Vasusharma, Namasharma and Dharmasharma. Vashusharma and Namasharma followed in the footsteps of their father. They followed the dictates of dharma and studied the sacred texts. But Dharmasharma displayed no such inclination. He spent this time in idle pursuits.

The upshot was that people started to shun Dharmasharma. When this became fairly serious, Dharmasharma felt ashamed and decided to look around for a teacher who would be able to teach him all that there was know. He did come across such a teacher soon and Dharmasharma because really learned.

A hunter once brought a baby parrot to Dharmasharma and the brahmana became extremely attached to the parrot. When the bird was killed by a cat, Dharmasharma’s sorrow knew no bounds. Hr sorrowed over the parrot and died. Since he had been thinking of a parrot when he died, Dharmasharma was born as a parrot in his next life.

“That parrot is none other than I,” said Kunjala.

The Padma Purana subsequently has several sections on the geography of the earth and on various tirthas. These we will skip over, as they can be found in many other Puranas.

The Daughters of the Gandharvas

Gandharvas are singers of heaven. There were five gandharvas who had one daughter each. The daughter of the gandharva Shukasangiti was Pramohini; Sushila’s daughter was Sushila; Svaravedi’s daughter was Susvara; Chanrakanta’s daughter was Sutara; and Suprabha’s daughter was Chandrika. These five daughters were exceedingly pretty. The were also very good friends.

In the month of Vaishakha, the five friends decided to worship the goddess Parvati. They therefore went to the forest to collect flowers. In the forest there was a beautiful lake. The five friends bathed in the lake and collected lotus flowers. They then built a clay image of the goddess and started to worship it.

The sage Vedanidhi and a son named Tirthapravara and Tirthapravara was also a sage. While the five daughters of the gandharvas were praying, Tirthapravara happened to come upon the scene. Tirthapravara was so handsome that the gandharva girls immediately fell in love with him. They figures that Parvati must have been satisfied with their prayers and sent Tirthapravara as their husband.