In such cases, demons and snakes had the right to funeral offerings and the dead ancestors obtained nothing. The thin and emaciated looking ancestors had not been honoured with funeral ceremonies. Alternatively, the ceremonies had been improperly performed so that demons and snakes had taken away all the offerings. Such ancestors kept looking forward to someone being born in their respective families so that an appropriate funeral ceremony might be performed.

Agasti also revealed that he was Prabhavati’s ancestor. The sage narrated what he had heard to Chandrasena and Chandraprabha. Prabhavati and her daughter, Virupakanidhi, were forcibly sent to Dhruvatirtha and made to perform a shraddha ceremony there. Agasti’s appearance improved instantly. A vimana arrived and took Agasti up to heaven.

The Varaha Purana next describes the story of Nachiketa. (This story is also to be found in the Mahabharata).

Irritated at the many questions Nachiketa kept asking him, his father, the sage Uddalaka, once let slip the words, “to to hell, go to Yama’s abode”.

Uddalaka soon repented his hasty words, but Nachiketa took his father’s words at their face value. He would not let them be falsified. In spite of Uddalaka’s attempts to dissuade him, Nachiketa would not budge from his decision to go to Yamaloka (Yama’s abode).

He did manage to reach Yama’s abode and so impressed was Yama by Nachiketa’s courage and dedication to the truth that he warmly welcomed Nachiketa. Nachiketa spent a few days as Yama’s guest and asked Yama many searching questions. You must ofcourse have realised that nachiketa had gone to Yama without having actually died. After spending some days with Yama, Nachiketa returned to his father with the answers to his question