A problem I have made for myself, need your help!

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Dear Sri Visnupada,

Please accept my humble obeisances.

 

In the Hari Bhakti vilasa, at the end of the ninth vilasa, there is a

section called naivedya-mahatmyam, The Glories of Prasadam. There are some

fifteen verses, however, there is nothing about liberation after 700 births.

Still, the wonderful results of taking prasadam, which are listed there, are

often exceeding the benediction of liberation after 700 births. It is stated

that the remnants of food offered to the Lord have the potency of one

million fire sacrifices; then there is a nice verse ending with the

statement: yo 'snati nityam purato murareh

prapnoti yajnayuta-koti-punyam

 

"One who takes the food that was previously accepted by Murari, attains the

pious results of ten-thousand times ten-million fire yajnas." After this

verse, which is numbered as 130 in my Bengali edition, verse 131 comes as a

commentary of the above as it were:

 

sadbhir masoparasais tu

yat phalam parikirtitam

visnor naivedya-sese yat

phalam tad bhunjatam kalau

 

This verse explains that in the Kali-yuga, a person who eats the remnants of

food offered to Lord Visnu, gets the above mentioned results after only six

months of eating such food.

 

This is pretty good. (Maybe you had referred to this verse?)

 

In the Brahma-vaivarta Purana, (4.37.27) it is stated that a person who

happens to eat the remnants of food offered to the Lord, in the association

of sadhus, gets the results of performing sixty thousand years of

austerities.

 

These are the only quotes that I could find that contain numbers other than

multiples of ten. In any case, it seems to me that most of the benefits

mentioned are far better than liberation after 700 births.

 

Now somebody (perhaps that lady) may argue that liberation is still better

than any number of yajnas, because yajnas take you to heaven only. Even

though the yajnas are specified in one verse, as agnistoma and vajapeya, the

meaning is not limited to that. In verse 133 there is a quite interesting

(and a little funny) statement, that explains what one actually gets:

 

hrdi rupam mukhe nama

naivedyam udare hareh

padodakam ca nirmalyam

mastake yasya so 'cyutah

 

"Having the form of the Lord in one's heart, His name in one's mouth, the

remnants of His food in one's belly and the pure water that has washed His

feet on one's head, one becomes (like) Acyuta." Sanatana Gosvami comments on

the words sah ayutah: "Acyutah means like Acyuta, because one attains the

liberations beginning with sarupya."

 

Thus we can conclude, from all the above statements, that in Kali-yuga, one

can get any type of liberation, after sincerely eating prasadam (bhaktya

bhunakti naivedyam), for six months.

 

Your servant

Ekanaha dasa

 

ps I have checked the following books:

 

Gaudiya-Vaisnava-abhidhana

Sabda-kalpa-druma (encyclopedic Sanskrit-Sanskrit dictionary)

Vacaspatyam (encyclopedic Sanskrit-Sanskrit dictionary)

Hari Bhakti vilasa

 

All these books have separate, often very extensive sub-entries under

'naivedyam'. (naivedyam is the word to search for, not prasadam)