Purāṇa / The eighteen / Viṣṇu Purāṇa

Viṣṇu Purāṇa (विष्णुपुराण)

About 23,000 verses in the traditional lists. Sattva in the Padma Purāṇa's sorting. Neither figure is this shelf's own measurement.

About twenty-three thousand verses in the lists, and sattva in the Padma sorting. The number is round. The book itself is the short, disciplined one. Six aṃśas. Parāśara teaches Maitreya. The five topics, creation, the creation after dissolution, lineage, the ages of the Manus, and the deeds along the lines, are kept in a compass a reader can actually hold. The structural map is the Viṣṇu Purāṇa hub. This profile is the story-essence, not a second map of the aṃśas.

The signature stories are the ones a child meets as Viṣṇu's. Dhruva, the boy who wanted a place no one could push him from, sent to the forest, taught by the seven sages to worship Vāsudeva, standing until the god has to answer, and placed at the pole. Prahlāda, son of the asura king Hiraṇyakaśipu, whose devotion does not consult his father. The father's boon was that no listed pair of conditions could kill him. Narasiṃha kills him; the Bhāgavata adds the threshold, the twilight and the lap that slip the boon. In the Bhāgavata's telling, too, it is Nārada who teaches Dhruva. This page says the man-lion kills him. It does not describe the killing. The churning of the ocean belongs to this book as well, though the Bhāgavata tells it longer. The mountain as the churn, the serpent as the rope, the tortoise as the base, the poison Śiva holds in his throat so that it does not enter the world, Lakṣmī, the nectar, the fight over the nectar. The page names the picture. It does not make the churning a procedure.

Kṛṣṇa's life is here in a cleaner, shorter telling than the Bhāgavata's tenth skandha. Pṛthu milks the earth. The avatāras are listed as a theology of rescue, not as a scorecard. The teaching is that Viṣṇu is the one reality and the world is his play, and that a play is not a dismissal. People inside it suffer. Dhruva suffers. Prahlāda suffers. The play does not make the suffering decorative.

What it tells

Dhruva; Prahlāda and Narasiṃha; the churning; Pṛthu and the earth; Kṛṣṇa's life in brief.

The teaching

One reality, many rescues. The five topics stay short enough that the stories do not drown the doctrine, and the doctrine does not erase the stories.

What a reader keeps

• About twenty-three thousand, as a list-number.
• Sattva in the Padma list.
• The pole star and the threshold are the two images to keep.

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 तेईस हजार श्लोक र सात्त्विक गुण भन्छ। पुस्तक छ अंशमा छ, पराशरले मैत्रेयलाई सिकाउँछन्। नक्सा विष्णुपुराणको मूल पृष्ठ हो। ध्रुवले ठाउँ चाहे। सप्तर्षिले उनलाई वासुदेवको उपासना सिकाए। भागवतमा नारदले सिकाउँछन्। ध्रुव तारा भए। प्रह्लादको भक्तिले बाबुको सल्लाह लिँदैन। नरसिंहले उसलाई मारे। दैलो, साँझ, र काख भागवतले थपेको हो, जसले वरदान छल्छ। यो पृष्ठले मारे भन्छ। तरिका लेख्दैन। समुद्र मन्थनको चित्र पनि यहीँ छ। विष शिवको कण्ठमा अडियो। यो पृष्ठले चित्र भन्छ। विधि बनाउँदैन।

Where it sits

Read the six aṃśas on the hub. The Bhāgavata tells the same life at another length.