Pañcatīrtha (Sarva-tīrtha List)
Pañcatīrtha · pañca-tīrtha, “the five tīrthas”
Pañcatīrtha has other meanings too: see all meanings of Pañcatīrtha.
Pañcatīrtha is a tīrtha named in Chapter 25 of the Brahma Purāṇa, in the list of the holy tīrthas and kshetras of the earth. The listeners asked the teller, “O knower of dharma, how many tīrthas and kshetras of puṇya are there on the earth? Tell us,” and in his answer he names more than four hundred, beginning with Pushkara.
Pañcatīrtha comes late in the list, after Badarīvana, Āsīna, Ratnamūlaka and Lokadvāra, and before Kapilā-tīrtha, Sūrya and Śaṅkhinī. The text gives no location or account of its own for it.
The inner tīrtha
Before he named the tīrthas, the teller said: one whose hands, feet and mind are under control, and who has jñāna, tapas and a good name, gains the fruit of serving all the tīrthas. When the mind, speech and senses are pure, these are tīrthas within one’s own body and show the path to svarga. If the inner faculty is corrupt, no number of baths in tīrthas makes it pure, as an unclean toddy pot is not made pure though washed a hundred times. Tīrthas, dānas, vratas and āśramas cannot purify one of bad nature, a hypocrite whose senses roam unchecked. Wherever a person lives with the senses restrained, that very place is for him Kurukshetra, Prayāga and Pushkara.
The rite and the phala
One who serves these tīrthas with śraddhā (faith), performs the bath and the other prescribed acts, fasts, masters the senses, offers tarpaṇa (water offerings) to the devas, ṛshis and pitṛs, worships the devatās and fasts three nights there gains distinct and endless fruits, and by them the fruit of the aśvamedha yāga, without doubt. One who hears or reads this glory of the tīrthas every day is freed from every pāpa.
Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 25
Sources
- Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 25