Purāṇa / The purāṇas / Viṣṇu Purāṇa

Viṣṇu Purāṇa (विष्णुपुराण)

Parāśara teaches Maitreya. Six aṃśas (अंश). Among the Mahāpurāṇas this is the one most often praised for keeping the five topics in a short compass: creation, the dissolution and the creation after it, the lineages, the ages of the Manus, and the deeds of those lines. It is not the Bhāgavata. The Bhāgavata tells Kṛṣṇa's life at a length this book does not, and builds its theology as bhakti. The Viṣṇu Purāṇa tells a great deal of the same matter as cosmology and as royal history, with Kṛṣṇa in the fifth aṃśa. This page is the six books. It is not a verse-by-verse shelf. The narrative profile, among the eighteen, is the Viṣṇu profile.

The six aṃśas

• One. Maitreya asks. The creation, sarga (सर्ग). The primal elements, the prajāpatis, and how a world comes to be peopled.
• Two. The measure of the world. Continents, heavens, and the regions below. Cosmography, not yet the kings.
• Three. The manvantaras (मन्वन्तर). How the Veda is kept when an age thins. The duties of the stages of life. This is the book's social teaching.
• Four. The lineages, vaṃśa (वंश), and the deeds along them, vaṃśānucarita (वंशानुचरित). Solar and lunar kings, down toward the age the fifth book will enter.
• Five. Kṛṣṇa's life, told shorter than the Bhāgavata's tenth skandha. The same birth, the same foster parents, the same departure, in another book's pace.
• Six. The four ages, the defects the book attributes to Kali, and the dissolution, pratisarga (प्रतिसर्ग). The end of the teaching, and of the world it described.

नेपालीमा

विष्णुपुराणमा पराशरले मैत्रेयलाई सिकाउँछन्। छ अंश। महापुराणमध्ये पाँच विषयलाई छोटो घेरामा राखेकोमा यसकै सबैभन्दा धेरै प्रशंसा गरिन्छ। ती विषय सर्ग, प्रतिसर्ग, वंश, मन्वन्तर र वंशानुचरित हुन्। यो भागवत होइन। भागवतले कृष्णको जीवन लामो गरी सुनाउँछ, र आफ्नो ईश्वरशास्त्र भक्तिका रूपमा खडा गर्छ। विष्णुपुराणले त्यही धेरै कुरा सृष्टिविद्या र राजवंशको इतिहासका रूपमा सुनाउँछ। कृष्ण पाँचौँ अंशमा छन्। यो पृष्ठ छ वटै पुस्तकको नक्सा हो, श्लोक-श्लोकको तह होइन।

एकमा सृष्टि। दुईमा संसारको नाप। तीनमा मन्वन्तर र आश्रम। चारमा वंश। पाँचमा कृष्ण, भागवतको दशौँ स्कन्धभन्दा छोटो। छमा युग, कलि, र प्रलय।

Where it sits

Read it beside the Bhāgavata when the question is what a purāṇa is supposed to contain. Read the thousand names when the question is praise rather than narrative. A short episode of Ribhu and Nidāgha travels in this purāṇa. The long dialogue of those two names is the Ribhu Gītā, the sixth aṃśa of the Śiva Rahasya. The Śiva Purāṇa is the other theological center, in another god's name, with its own saṃhitās.