Brahma Vaivarta Purana Chapter 8:71-80

Brahma Vaivarta Purana

Sri Janmastami-vrata-pujopavasa-nirupana

Vows, Worship, and Fasting on Sri Janmastami

Chapter 8: Verse 71-80

ENGLISH TRANSLATION 71 On a pure Janmastami (not mixed with the saptami) one should not eat even fruit or betel nuts, or even drink water. Eating these is like eating stool or cow’s flesh, or like drinking urine. What, then, can be said of eating rice? 72 The wise say that night lasts for 9 hours and is bounded, at its beginning and end, by sunrise and sunset, which last for 48 minutes each. 73 A person who on a pure Janmastami (not mixed with the saptami) follows the Janmastami vow and keeps an all-night vigil becomes free from the sins of a hundred births. Of this there is no doubt. 74 A person who on a pure Janmastami (not mixed with the saptami) fasts but does not follow the Janmastami vow or keep the all-night vigil, attains the result of performing an asvamedha-yajna. 75 He is freed from the sins performed in the infancy, childhood, youth, and age of seven lifetimes. 76 One who eats on Lord Krsna’s birthday is lowest of mankind. His sinful reaction like that of having raped his mother and murdered a hundred brahmanas. 77 His pious credits of ten million births are at once destroyed. He become impure. He becomes unfit to worship the demigods or the pitas. 78 At the end of his life he enters the hell called Kalasutra (the rope of time). As long as the sun and moon shine in the sky he is devoured by worms with teeth sharp like spears. 79 When his time in hell is over he rises to the earth, where he becomes a worm in stool for sixty thousand years. 80 Then he becomes a vulture for ten billion births, a pig for a hundred births, a dog for a hundred births, and a jackal for a hundred births.