Purāṇa / The eighteen / Padma Purāṇa

Padma Purāṇa (पद्मपुराण)

About 55,000 verses in the traditional lists. Sattva in the Padma Purāṇa's sorting. Neither figure is this shelf's own measurement.

The lists say about fifty-five thousand verses, and the same book that says so sorts itself among the sāttvika. The number is a traditional round. The self-sorting is the thing to be careful with. The Padma is the purāṇa that classifies the eighteen by guṇa, and it classifies them from a Vaiṣṇava devotion. A book it calls tamas may be a Śaiva book it wants the reader to rank lower. This shelf prints the list once, on the contents page, and refuses to let the list become a judgment of worth.

The name is the lotus, the seat Brahmā is born from. The printed text is usually met in khaṇḍas, and the khaṇḍas are not stable from edition to edition. A reader will often find Sṛṣṭi, Bhūmi, Svarga, Pātāla, and Uttara, and then find that a sixth or a seventh has been gathered in. Inside them the book does what a large purāṇa does. It retells Rāma. It tells the rewards of months, especially Kārttika. A dialogue that travels with the book, and also on its own, is the Śiva Gītā, Śiva teaching Rāma. This page does not freeze a khaṇḍa, because the khaṇḍas are not stable. It praises tīrthas. It argues, at length, that Viṣṇu-bhakti is the use of the other stories.

There is no single episode that is 'the' Padma story the way Prahlāda is a Bhāgavata story. The memorable act of the book is the classification itself, and the warning attached to it. A compendium that ranks the other compendia is doing theology, not census.

What it tells

The lotus of Brahmā; a retelling of Rāma; the vow-literature of months, above all Kārttika; the guṇa-sorting of the eighteen.

The teaching

Devotion sorts a library. The sorting is a devotion's, and a reader who forgets that will mistake a polemic for a fact about the other seventeen.

What a reader keeps

• About fifty-five thousand, as a list-number.
• Sattva, by its own sorting.
• The guṇa list lives here, and does not outrank the books it ranks.

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 पचपन्न हजार श्लोक भन्छ, र आफैँलाई सात्त्विक राख्छ। अङ्क गोलो हो। गुणको छनोट वैष्णव भक्तिको हो। तमस् भनिएको पुस्तक शैव भएर तल पारिएको हुन सक्छ। यो तहले सूची एक पटक छाप्छ, र मूल्यको फैसला बनाउँदैन। नाम कमल हो, जसबाट ब्रह्मा जन्मन्छन्। खण्डहरू संस्करणपिच्छे अड्दैनन्। यसमा राम, कार्तिकको व्रत, तीर्थ र विष्णुभक्तिको लामो चर्चा छ। यससँग हिँड्ने शिवगीतामा शिवले रामलाई सिकाउँछन्। खण्ड अड्याइँदैन, किनकि खण्डहरू अड्दैनन्।

Where it sits

The contents page of the eighteen is where the guṇa list is printed as a list, with this caveat.