Purāṇa / The eighteen / Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa

Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa (मार्कण्डेयपुराण)

About 9,000 verses in the traditional lists. Rajas in the Padma Purāṇa's sorting. Neither figure is this shelf's own measurement.

About nine thousand verses in the lists, rajas in the Padma sorting. Mārkaṇḍeya sends Jaimini to four learned birds, who answer his questions: Hariścandra, Madālasā, Dattātreya, the manvantaras. Inside the Sāvarṇi manvantara sits the Devī Māhātmya, often printed as chapters 81 to 93, also called the Durgā Saptaśatī, the seven hundred. (The banyan-leaf vision is told in the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavata.)

The Māhātmya is three episodes of the goddess and one theology. The Devī Gītā is a different book, the Devī Bhāgavata, in which the Goddess teaches Himālaya. Madhu and Kaiṭabha, born of the dirt of Viṣṇu's ear while he sleeps, killed when she wakes him. Mahiṣa, the buffalo-form who cannot be answered by the gods separately, answered by the goddess gathered out of all their light. Śumbha and Niśumbha, and the powers who come out of her, including Kālī. The page says these enemies fall. It does not describe the killing. Between the episodes the poem says what she is. Not a goddess beside the world. The power standing inside every being. The refrain that carries this is sat below, one śloka of a poem that repeats the frame and changes the form she is wearing. This page sits the line in which the form is power. It does not sit the seven hundred.

The teaching is śakti as what the other gods spend without naming. A battle narrative is the device. The doctrine is the refrain. Nepal's household year meets this text at Dashain, and the household page for that festival stays on its own shelf. This profile does not become a ritual order for those days.

What it tells

Jaimini and the four birds; Hariścandra, Madālasā, Dattātreya; the manvantaras; inside the Sāvarṇi manvantara, the Devī Māhātmya in three episodes, Madhu-Kaiṭabha, Mahiṣa, Śumbha-Niśumbha.

The teaching

The goddess is the power in every being. The wars are how the poem makes a reader look at a sentence he would otherwise skip.

What a reader keeps

• About nine thousand, as a list-number.
• Rajas in the Padma list.
• One refrain is sat. The seven hundred are not.

A line

या देवी सर्वभूतेषु शक्तिरूपेण संस्थिता ।
नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः ॥ yā devī sarvabhūteṣu śaktirūpeṇa saṃsthitā |
namas tasyai namas tasyai namas tasyai namo namaḥ ||

The poem says this, and then says it again with another word in the place of power. Knowledge, sleep, hunger, shadow. The frame stays. This page sits the line in which the form is power. The English is this shelf's own.

Who is the goddess standing in all beings in the form of power: homage to her, homage to her, homage to her, homage.

नेपालीमा

सूचीले करिब नौ हजार श्लोक र रजोगुण भन्छ। मार्कण्डेयले जैमिनिलाई चार ज्ञानी चराकहाँ पठाउँछन्। चराहरूले हरिश्चन्द्र, मदालसा, दत्तात्रेय र मन्वन्तरबारे उनका प्रश्नको उत्तर दिन्छन्। सावर्णि मन्वन्तरभित्र, प्रायः अध्याय ८१ देखि ९३ मा छापिने, देवीमाहात्म्य छ, दुर्गा सप्तशती पनि भनिने। (वटको पातको दर्शन महाभारत र भागवतमा भनिएको छ।) तीन प्रसङ्ग आउँछन्: मधु-कैटभ, महिष, शुम्भ-निशुम्भ। देवीगीता अर्कै पुस्तक हो, देवीभागवत, जहाँ देवीले हिमालयलाई सिकाउँछिन्। यो पृष्ठले शत्रु ढले भन्छ। मारिने तरिका लेख्दैन। बीचको वाक्य: उनी हरेक प्राणीभित्र शक्ति भएर बस्छिन्। एउटा श्लोक तल प्रस्तुत गरिएको छ। सात सय समावेश गरिएका छैनन्।

Where it sits

The structural portals do not replace this book. Dashain's household page is its own shelf and is not a rite-list.