38. పంచమి కల్ప సమాప్తి కథనము

Summary of chapter 38 of the Bhavishya Purāṇa is as follows:

The Pañcamī Kalpa is brought to its conclusion with a summary of all the serpent-worship practices taught in Chapters 32–37 and a statement of their cumulative fruits. A particularly remarkable teaching appears here: that the soul of a person who dies of snakebite — an abrupt and untimely death — is immediately received into the nāga-world if that person had performed the Nāga-pañcamī vrata in life. The nāgas themselves become his companions in the afterlife, and he enjoys great pleasures in the nether-world before taking a propitious rebirth. The chapter thus transforms what might be seen as a calamity — death by snakebite — into a gateway to extraordinary post-mortem experience for the devotee who has honoured the serpent-deities throughout his life.