Puṇyapura

Puṇyapura · puṇya-pura, “the city of puṇya”

Puṇyapura is a lovely city named in the fourth of the accounts the Vaitāla tells King Vikramāditya in the Pratisarga Parva of the Bhavishya Purāṇa. The printed rendering glosses it as Pūnā. Long ago King Dharmavallabha ruled there, with Satyaprakāśa as his minister.

Dharmavallabha and Satyaprakāśa

The king asked his minister how many kinds of ānanda there are. Satyaprakāśa named four, one for each āśrama, and said that the gṛhastha’s ānanda has the wife at its head. The king searched for a fitting dharmic wife and found none. Satyaprakāśa went through many lands and came to the shore of the ocean in the Sindhu country, where he praised the ocean and begged a worthy queen for his king. The ocean showed him a tree of coral leaves and pearl fruits in the water, with a lovely girl seated on it.

The king followed the girl into the ocean and down to Pātāla. She promised to meet him at the Devī temple on kṛshṇa-paksha caturdaśī. There the king slew the rākshasa Bakavāhana, who had seized her. She told him she was Madavatī, daughter of a vidyādhara, freed that day from her father’s śāpa. She came with him to Puṇyapura and was married to him amid great festivity.

Some days later Satyaprakāśa died. Asked by the Vaitāla why, Vikramāditya answered that the minister saw the king sunk day and night in pleasure, neglecting kingdom and people, knew the kingdom’s ruin was near, and gave up his life so as not to see it.

Sources

• Bhavishya Purāṇa, Pratisarga Parva, Khaṇḍa 2, Chapters 1–23