Vishnu Purana : is one of the eighteen Mahā Purāṇas. It was the one he went through carefully, Sri Aurobindo said in an evening talk with disciples, for it describes most perfectly all the aspects of the Puranic scriptures. The Vishnu Purana opens as a conversation between sage Maitreya & his guru, Rishi Parāshara (q.v.), with the sage asking, “What is the nature of this universe & everything that is in it?” More than any other major Purana, it presents its contents in the Panchalakshana format: Sarga, cosmogony, Pratisarga, cosmology, Manvantara, cosmic cycles, Vamsha, deals with gods & sages, & Vamshānu-charitam with chief human vamshas, dynasties or rather lines of human development. The first Amsha (book) of this Purana deals with the creation, maintenance & destruction of the universe from which came the evolutionary theories of Sāṅkhya. It describes Vishnu as all that is & all that is not. It mentions all his epithets: Hari, Janārdana, Mādhava, Achyuta, Hrishikesha & others. The second book deals with the creation of our earth, its seven continents & seven oceans, mounts Meru, Mandāra & other major mountains, & Bhāratavarsha along with its numerous rivers & diverse people. The seven continents are named Jambu, Plaksha, Salmala, Kusha, Krauncha, Saka & Pūshkara, each surrounded by different types of liquids – salt water, fresh water, wine, sugarcane juice, clarified butter, liquid yoghurt, & milk. The third book describes the manvantaras; Manu’s ages or evolutionary cycles in which every Yuga (era, age) starts, matures & then dissolves. Six manvantaras, states the text, have already passed, & the current age belong to the seventh. In each Yuga (see Yugas), asserts the text, the Vedas are arranged into four, & it is challenged – this has happened twenty eight times already. In each manvantara, a Veda Vyāsa appears & he diligently organizes the eternal knowledge, with the aid of his students. Be diligent in the service of the gods, sages & guru, asserts the Purana, seek the welfare of all creatures, one’s own children & of one’s own soul. Anyone, regardless of his varṇa or stage of life, who lives a life according to the above duties, is the best worshipper of Vishnu. The fifth, the longest with 38 chapters, is dedicated to the life & works of Sri Krishna & its narration similar to that in Bhāgavata Purāṇa, of the Harivamsha in Mahābhārata, & several other Puranas. The sixth & last, the shortest with eight chapters, asserts that Kali Yuga is vicious, cruel & filled with evilness that create suffering, yet it is excellent because one can refuse to join the evil, devote oneself to Vishnu & thus achieve salvation. For the Jīva has a nature of its own: pure, composed of happiness & wisdom; the elements of ignorance, impurity & pain belong to Prakriti. The five Yamas, five Niyamas, Pranayama & Pratyahāra, compassion, truth, honesty, disinterestedness, self-restraint, yoga, meditation, contemplative devotion on Vishnu brings liberation, absorption in Vishnu, union with Brahman, the Ultimate Reality. Other chapters, esp. in 5th & 6th books, gave rise to various forms of Vedanta.
... and spiritual plane his life on the physical plane does not matter. He is true, he is real. The physical is only a shadow of the psychic. Disciple : I find the Vishnu Purana very fine. Sri Aurobindo : In the Vishnu Purana all the aspects of a Purana are nicely described. It is one of the Puranas I have gone through carefully. I wonder how it has escaped the general notice : it is magnificent... Sri Aurobindo ? I want to see him". M. replied : "You can't see him". Then with an air of inviting confidence he asked M. "Does he fly away?'' (Laughter) 27-2-1939 (conti.) "The Vishnu Purana" and Puranas in general Disciple : Are the incidents related in the Purana about Krishna’s life psychic representations created by the poet, or do they correspond to facts that had occurred... a reaction against Buddhism in the Gupta period." Disciple : They are supposed to have been written in or about the 3rd or 4th century A. D. Sri Aurobindo : Most probably. In the Vishnu Purana Buddha is regarded as an Avatar of Vishnu who came to deceive the Asuras! He is not referred to by name but is called "Maya Moha" This Purana is a fine work. 20–12–1939 Disciple ...
... they were also Vaishnavas. SATYENDRA: It is the Kurukshetra Krishna who spoke the Gita. SRI AUROBINDO: The one who spoke the Gita is the Vishnu aspect. In the Vishnu Purana all these aspects are very finely described. The Vishnu Purana is the only Purana I have carefully read through. I wonder how it has escaped general notice that it is also magnificent poetry. There are also some very humorous... Bramanical revival which came in the Gupta period as a reaction to Buddhism. PURANI: They are supposed to have been written about the third or fourth century A. D. SRI AUROBINDO: Probably. In the Vishnu Purana Buddha is regarded as an Avatar of Vishnu who came to deceive the Asuras. He is not referred to by his own name but called Mayamoha. The Purana says, "Buddhasya, Buddhasya", which evidently refers ...
... poetic method employed is justified by the richness and power of the creation. The earliest work is the best — with one exception at the end in a style which stands by itself and is unique. The Vishnu Purana for instance in spite of one or two desert spaces is a remarkable literary creation of a very considerable quality maintaining much of the direct force and height of the old epic style. There is... in a complete psycho-spiritual and psycho-physical science of Yoga. Its popular form in the Vaishnava religion centres round the mystic apologue of the pastoral life of the child Krishna. In the Vishnu Purana the tale of Krishna is a heroic saga of the divine Avatar; in later Puranas we see the aesthetic and erotic symbol developing and in the Bhagavat it is given its full power and prepared to manifest ...
... Sri Aurobindo : One who spoke the Gita is the Vishnu aspect. Disciple : Arjuna could not bear his sight and had to ask him to resume his human form. Sri Aurobindo : In the Vishnu Purana all the aspects of Vishnu are nicely described. It is one of the Puranas I have read through carefully. I wonder how it has escaped general notice because it is magnificent poetry. There is... Buddhism in the Gupta period. Disciple : The Puranas are even the earliest, supposed to have been written about the 3rd or the 4th century A. D. Sri Aurobindo : Most probably. In the Vishnu Purana Buddha is regarded as one of the Avatars of Vishnu who came to deceive the Asuras. He is not referred to by name but is called "Maya-moha". Reference to Budha is very clear; it repeats "Budyaswa ...
... our own age, that .] of the laborers (Shudras), or rather the servants—of the ego, of the machine, of sex and comfort. The age of the "small dirty bodies,” ksudra deha samskara-barjitah, as the Vishnu Purana literally says. 15 And each time, the Shakti came down from one center to another: from the mind center to the heart center to the stomach center to the sex center—that is, the center of Matter... Actually, since Buddhism. Pre-Buddhist India was not like that, especially not Vedic India. × This Vishnu Purana, which dates back roughly to the third century A.D., says many other interesting things about our Kali Yuga. For instance: "In the Kali Yuga, kings will not take care of their subjects, and yet ...
... prodigious. India has become the land of saints & ascetics, but progressively also of a decaying society and an inert, effete & helpless people. The indignant Page 372 denunciation of the Vishnu Purana against the certain results to society of the Buddhist heresy has been fulfilled in the fate of our strongly Buddhicised Hindu nation. We see increasing upon it through the centuries the doom announced... pure satisfying wideness in being of that knowledge-nature, brihat. This is the soul's kingdom of heaven, its ideal state, immortality, amritatwam. All things here are in the language of [the Vishnu Purana] vijnanavijrimbhitani; they live here in fragments of that wide & mighty truth, but because of bheda, because they are broken up & divide truth against truth, they cannot enjoy Truth of knowledge ...
... poetic method employed is justified by the richness and power of the creation. The earliest work is the best—with one exception at the end in a new style which stands by itself and is unique. The Vishnu Purana for instance in spite of one or two desert spaces is a remarkable literary creation of a very considerable quality maintaining much of the direct force and height of the old epic style. There is... in a complete psycho-spiritual and psycho-physical science of Yoga. Its popular form in the Vaishnava religion centres round the mystic apologue of the pastoral life of the child Krishna. In the Vishnu Purana the tale of Krishna is a heroic saga of the divine Avatar: in later Puranas we see the aesthetic and erotic symbol developing and in the Bhagavat it is given its full power and prepared to manifest ...
... chapters, as many as 85 are from the Upanishads, nearly 60 from the Vedas (mostly from the Rig Veda, and one from Yajur Veda and three from Atharva Veda), over 20 from the Gita, and one each from the Vishnu Purana and Sankara's Vivekachudamani. To sustain an argument (be it pūrva-paksa or siddhānta) by reference to ancient authority has been the traditional Indian way of convincingly projecting a... 'Sruti'. Ancient knowledge and learning, preserved through countless generations, is known as the 'Smriti'. 4 Although not as "infallible" as the Sruti, the Smriti also - notably the Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavata - have been included among the "authoritative scriptures of the Hindu dharma". 5 As for the Gita, it was Sri Aurobindo's ardent hope that it might become "the universally ...
... darkness. Darkness strangles earth's breast. It is stark night. Man's mind has become the handmaiden of his lowest instincts. Man is demented. It is the time of 'little bodies unclean,' as says the Vishnu Purana. 1 The creation is rotted to its core. Time for the deliverance. Time for pralaya. Out of the apocalypse, phoenix-like, a new creation emerges. The Puranas state that the duration of each... man's stature too declines. Man's height, which is fourteen cubits in Treta, is reduced to seven cubits in Dwapara, and goes down to four and a half cubits in Kali. Sri Aurobindo 1.The Vishnu Purana, which was recorded in about the third century A.D., says many other interesting things about the Kali Yuga: "In the Kali Yuga, the kings will not take care of their subjects, and yet they will ...
... this need not trouble us; for in the old Hindu system all that is objective had something subjective corresponding to it and constituting its real nature. We find it explicitly declared in the Vishnu Purana that all things here are manifestations of vijnana, pure ideal knowledge, sarvani vijnanavijrimbhitani—ideal knowledge vibrating out into intensity of various phenomenal existences each with its ...
... his queries in the form in which he has put them. He will find for instance a long description of invisible Page 451 worlds,—invisible, that is to say, to our physical senses,—in the Vishnu Purana, but it is picturesque rather than precise. We do not think he will find much about the constituents of the worlds or the size of subtle bodies. The form of the third question lends itself to ...
... आयु = life, & there is nothing to prevent us from taking विश्र्वायु= that which is the source of all being here on this earth, for Surya is सविता, the Father & Creator; all things are, says the Vishnu Purana, सर्वाणि विज्ञानविजृंभितानि. महो द्रुहो अपधायि. Sayana says “The wheel was wrested from Surya, the great doer of harm”! प्रभुतस्य द्रोग्धोः. An astonishing interpretation. The great evil-doer ...
... arrangement of men's actions, duties and institutions by an external compulsion representing the community's collective will began in the Bronze Age with the institution of government in Kingship. The Vishnu Purana tells us, conformably with this idea, that Vishnu in the Satya incarnates as Yajna, that is to say as the divine Master in man to whom men offer up all their actions as a sacrifice, reserving nothing ...
... come down and participated in the labour of the earth's evolution. Earth is the field of progress. There is no progress of our kind on the higher planes. Sri Aurobindo cites the passage from Vishnu Purana where it is said that even the gods, if they want to rise higher, have to come down to the earth and take a human birth. That is the purport of "the godhead greater by a human fate." Page ...
... little girl that the jailors were awakened, who without losing time could run to inform Kamsa. Many incidents of Krishna's infancy have been described in the Bhagavata Purana, Harivamsa and Vishnu Purana. Puranic stories are symbolic, and although they narrate truthfully the Page 24 inner reality of spiritual events and experiences, their external descriptions need to be read ...
... But our knowledge of it may not be quite correct: for instance, we see it standing on its roots. But it may be standing on something else for that matter. SRI AUROBINDO: It is the story of the Vishnu Purana where we read that it is difficult to say whether the king is on the elephant or the elephant is on the king. All European philosophers after the Greeks hold that Reason is the faculty by which ...
... the Lover and Beloved, the Giver and the object of all action, ritual and worship, of all karma also entered into it in the associations of the worshipper and sometimes became prominent. The Vishnu Purana tells us that Vishnu in the Satya Yuga incarnates as Yajna, in the Treta as the conqueror and king, in the Dwapara as Vyasa, the compiler, codifier and lawgiver. It is not meant that He incarnates ...
... the Disposer of its Laws, the Almighty Providence, the Master of the Dharma. It has a similar sense to the word यमः applied to the single god of Dharma, Yama. There is an echo of this use in the Vishnu Purana when it is said that Vishnu is born in the Satya Yuga as Yajna, in the Treta as the Chakravarti Raja, in the Dwapara as Vyasa. In the Satya Yuga mankind is governed by its own pure, perfect and ...
... two orders, the householder and the ascetic, the monk and the layman, an effect which subsists to the present day. It is this upsetting of the Dharma for which we find it fiercely attacked in the Vishnu Purana under the veil of an apologue, for it weakened in the end the life of society by its tense exaggeration and its hard system of opposites. But Buddhism too had another side, a side turned towards ...
... tendency to substitute Balarama's name for Buddha's or to say that Buddha was an Avatar of Vishnu, but that he came to mislead the Asuras. He is evidently aimed at in the story of Mayamoha in the Vishnu Purana. He [ Buddha ] had a more powerful vital than Ramakrishna, a stupendous will and an invincible mind of thought. If he had led the ordinary life, he would have been a great organiser, conqueror ...
... The Life Divine Chapter XIV The Supermind as Creator All things are self-deployings of the Divine Knowledge. Vishnu Purana. (II. 12. 39.) A principle of active Will and Knowledge superior to Mind and creatrix of the worlds is then the intermediary power and state of being between that self-possession of the One and this flux of the Many ...
... world as a recurrent series of phenomena of which the terms vary but the general formula abides the same. The theory is only acceptable if we recognise the truth of the conception formulated in the Vishnu Purana of the world as vijñāna-vijṛmbhitāni , developments of ideas in the Universal Intelligence which lies at the root of all material phenomena and by its indwelling force shapes the growth of the ...
... Shakespeare's King John – I still remember these titles – and several other titles of the type used in my college as textbooks. Some works of Vivekananda came and also the Brahmavaivarta and the Vishnu Puranas in the Basumati edition. All of these books we went through over and over again, times without number, for new books could not be had for the asking. But questionings too began to arise: and ...
... Cosmos. In the development of art in mankind East has contributed her share. But the art-ideals of the East are not understood by many even among those who claim to follow them. In the Vishnu Dharmottar Purana the six limbs—(Shadanga) of the art of painting are enumerated showing that Indian Art must have reached a high standard of development before the canons of art could be formulated. We have ...
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