Purāṇa / The eighteen / Bhaviṣya Purāṇa
Bhaviṣya Purāṇa (भविष्यपुराण)
About 14,500 verses in the traditional lists. Rajas in the Padma Purāṇa's sorting. Neither figure is this shelf's own measurement.
About fourteen thousand five hundred verses in the traditional lists. Rajas in the Padma sorting. The name means the future. The temptation of the name is to read the book as a timetable, and the book does not survive that reading as one ancient document. What circulates under the title is uneven. Large parts are late. Passages mention peoples and centuries far after the purāṇic frame, and those passages are not a code this shelf will help anyone decipher. The shelf does not treat the Bhaviṣya as prophecy to be decoded, and it does not treat the whole as a single old book.
What the tradition expects from the title is still intelligible. The ages of the world, the sun and the vows kept in the sun's name, the conduct of a person inside a declining age. Some printed versions are mostly a dharma-digest of festivals and gifts. This page does not turn that digest into a calendar a house should follow. Nepal's year has its own household shelf, built from the valley's practice, not from this text.
The teaching worth keeping is a caution the name itself requests. A book called 'the future' is the one most likely to be rewritten by every present. The memorable takeaway is to ask, of any startling passage, which century is speaking. The shelf will not supply the answer by inventing a date. It will say when it does not know, and it does not know a stable critical text of this purāṇa the way it knows the shape of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa's six aṃśas.
What it tells
The four ages; vows in the sun's name; a great deal of later material that rides under the same title.
The teaching
A future-book is the easiest book to forge a present into. The name is a warning, not a promise of dates.
What a reader keeps
- About 14,500, as a list-number.
- Rajas in the Padma list.
- Late passages are not a code, and this page will not decode them.
A line
A line people recite from this book is not sat here. The shelf does not print a verse it has not checked.
नेपालीमा
सूचीले करिब चौध हजार पाँच सय श्लोक र रजोगुण भन्छ। नाम भविष्य हो। त्यसैले पुस्तकलाई समयतालिका पढ्ने लोभ हुन्छ। यो नाममा चलेको पाठ असमान छ। यसको धेरै भाग पछिको हो। पछिल्ला जाति र शताब्दी आउँछन्। यो तहले तिनलाई भविष्यवाणीको सङ्केत बनाउँदैन, र पुरानो एउटै पुस्तक ठान्दैन। परम्पराले यो नामबाट युग, सूर्य र व्रतको अपेक्षा गर्छ। यो पृष्ठले त्यसलाई घरको पात्रो बनाउँदैन।
Where it sits
The household year is its own shelf. It was not copied out of this purāṇa.