Purāṇa / The eighteen / Varāha Purāṇa

Varāha Purāṇa (वराहपुराण)

About 24,000 verses in the traditional lists. Sattva in the Padma Purāṇa's sorting. Neither figure is this shelf's own measurement.

About twenty-four thousand verses in the lists, sattva in the Padma sorting. Varāha is the boar. The earth had gone under, and the rescue is a body. Viṣṇu as the boar lifts Bhūmi on his tusk. The dialogue of the book is that rescue talking to the rescued. The earth asks. The boar answers. Cosmology, in this frame, is not above the ground. It is the reason the ground is still here to ask.

The bulk of the book is vows, tīrthas, and the Mathurā-māhātmya, the praise of Kṛṣṇa's country. It shares the purāṇic habit of letting a place become a theology. The five topics, the manvantaras among them, are thinner here than in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa. Stories gather around the tusk: the earth's fear, the asura who hid her, the holding. This page says the earth is lifted. It does not turn the rescue into a scene to be copied or a rite to be performed.

The teaching is holding. A god's most philosophical act, in this book, is to put the ground back under living feet. Bhakti is gratitude to a holder. The memorable image is the tusk, which is a strange place to carry a world, and the strangeness is the point. The support does not look like a throne.

What it tells

The boar who lifts the earth; the dialogue of Varāha and Bhūmi; vows and tīrthas; the Mathurā-māhātmya.

The teaching

The world continues because it is held. The holder does not look like a king. He looks like a boar, and the world is on a tusk.

What a reader keeps

• About twenty-four thousand, as a list-number.
• Sattva in the Padma list.
• The tusk is the theology. No rite is extracted from it.

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 चौबीस हजार श्लोक र सात्त्विक गुण भन्छ। वराहले पृथ्वीलाई दाह्रामा उठाए। संवाद उद्धार गर्ने वराह र उद्धार भएकी भूमिबीचको हो। पुस्तकको ठूलो भाग व्रत, तीर्थ, र मथुरा-माहात्म्य हो। पाँच विषय विष्णुपुराणमा भन्दा यहाँ पातला छन्। यो पृष्ठले पृथ्वी उठाइयो भन्छ। अनुष्ठान बनाउँदैन। शिक्षा थाम्नु हो। संसारको आधार सिंहासनजस्तो देखिँदैन।

Where it sits

The shorter telling of the avatāras is the Viṣṇu Purāṇa. This book is the boar's own length.