Legend in Agni Purana says that out of a hundred wives of the king Charudharma, the ruler of the world, Lalita, the daughter of the king of Vidharba, was able to win and monopolise the love of her husband, through the merit of observing such a lamp-giving Vrata. Lalita used to light up the divine edifice of Lord Vishnu with thousands and thousands of lamps, every night. Lalita had said that by illuminating a divine temple with lamps, on the day of the eleventh phase of the moon, a man is able to reside blissfully in heaven. The stealer of such a lamp is afflicted with dumbness and is doomed to suffer incessant nameless agonies in the dark and bottomless abyss of perdition. She had also said that the human life is the culminating stage of all animal existences on earth, and it is by going through thousands and thousands of necessary cycles of animal-existence, that a being is evolved out as a man. Finally the adhyaya ends saying that having heard these words from the lips of Lalita, the co-wives of the queen began to illuminate the temple of Vishnu in the night, and ascended heaven through its merit. Thus by offering lighted lamps to the god, a man acquires greater merit. |