Purāṇa / The eighteen / Vāmana Purāṇa
Vāmana Purāṇa (वामनपुराण)
About 10,000 verses in the traditional lists. Rajas in the Padma Purāṇa's sorting. Neither figure is this shelf's own measurement.
About ten thousand verses in the lists, rajas in the Padma sorting. Vāmana is the dwarf. Bali, an asura king, is in the middle of a sacrifice and is famous for not refusing a guest. A small brahmin asks for three steps of ground. Bali's teacher, Śukra, sees the trap and tells him to refuse. Bali will not refuse a guest he has already welcomed. The dwarf becomes the stride. One step is the earth. One step is the sky. The third step has nowhere left to go except the king's own head. Bali offers it. He is placed in the nether world, and he is honored, not spat on. A king who lost by keeping his word is kept as a model of the word.
The book is shorter than its reputation needs. Around the three steps it tells other tales of the same god's measures, and of tīrthas, especially the ones connected with the Sarasvatī in some recensions. The page does not turn those into a route. The signature is the step.
The teaching is a gift that looked small. Sovereignty passes because a good king would not break hospitality, and the god who receives the gift uses it to take everything, and then does not humiliate the giver. The memorable tension is deliberate. Bali is right to give. Vāmana is not a cheat in the book's eyes. He is the request that reveals what three steps include. A reader who wants only to admire Bali, or only to admire the dwarf, has halved the story.
What it tells
Bali's sacrifice; the three steps; the dwarf who is the stride; Bali honored in defeat.
The teaching
Hospitality that cannot refuse is a kind of greatness, and it can cost a world. The book keeps both the greatness and the cost.
What a reader keeps
- About ten thousand, as a list-number.
- Rajas in the Padma list.
- The third step is the head. The king is not disgraced.
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 दस हजार श्लोक र रजोगुण भन्छ। बलिको यज्ञमा वामनले तीन पाइला जमिन मागे। शुक्रले नदेऊ भने। बलिले अतिथि फर्काएनन्। एउटा पाइला पृथ्वीमा, एउटा आकाशमा, र तेस्रो उनकै शिरमा पर्यो। उनी पातालमा राखिए, र सम्मानित भए। सानो देखिएको दानले संसार समेट्छ। दाता अपमानित हुँदैनन्। दुवै कुरा कथामा छन्।
Where it sits
The avatāra list on the Viṣṇu Purāṇa hub names this rescue among the others.