As the Shiva Purana tells it
Shiva Purana, Rudra Samhita 17 to 18 · 3 min read
In the town of Kampilya there lived a learned priest named Yajnadatta, and his son was called Gunanidhi, which means a treasury of virtues. The name did not fit. The boy learned his lessons and then forgot them, and spent his days with gamblers. Whatever he lost, his mother quietly paid, and she kept it from his father.
One day Yajnadatta was walking in the market and saw a gambler wearing a ring he knew. It was his own ring, which he had given his wife. "Where did you get that?" he said.
"Your son lost it to me at dice," said the gambler. "He loses a great deal to me. Did you not know?"
Yajnadatta went home and asked for the ring, and his wife made excuses, and he understood everything. That night he disowned his son and put a new wife in his house. Gunanidhi heard of it and did not dare go home.
He wandered out of the town with nothing. By evening he was faint with hunger. He saw a crowd of people going to a Shiva temple with plates of food, sweets and fruit, and he followed them, thinking only of the food. It was Shivaratri, and they had come to keep the night's worship.
Gunanidhi sat by the temple door and waited. He heard the singing and the bells and the names of Shiva through every watch of the night, though he was listening only for the people to fall asleep.
At last, late in the night, they slept. He crept into the shrine. The lamp before the linga had burned down so low that he could see nothing, and the offerings were lost in the dark. He tore a strip from his lower cloth, twisted it into a wick and laid it in the lamp. The flame rose, the shadow went off the face of the linga, and the whole shrine lit up.
He gathered the food in his arms and turned to run. In the dark he trod on a sleeping man, who woke and shouted, "Thief! There is a thief!" The temple guards came running, and one of them struck Gunanidhi down. He died there on the temple floor, with the stolen food still in his hands.
The messengers of Yama came for him with their nooses, for he had lived a wicked life. Before they could take him, the attendants of Shiva arrived.
"He is ours," they said.
"He was a gambler and a thief," said Yama's men. "He died stealing."
"He fasted on Shivaratri, though he did not mean to," said Shiva's attendants. "He stayed awake through the night and heard the names of Shiva sung. And with his own cloth he made a lamp burn bright before the linga, so that the darkness went from it. That is enough."
They took him to Shiva's heaven. He was born again as Dama, the son of the king of Kalinga, and when Dama became king he had lamps lit in every Shiva temple in his kingdom. After that life he was born once more, and this time he worshipped Shiva so long that Shiva made him lord of all the world's treasure. He was Kubera, king of the city of Alaka. And Shiva, out of fondness for him, came to live on Kailasa, close beside his friend.