Synopsis of the Vishnu Purana

From the sketch thus offered of the subjects of the Puranas, and which, although admitting of correction, is believed to be in the main a candid and accurate summary, it will be evident that in their present condition they must be received with caution as authorities for the mythological religion of the Hindus at any remote period. They preserve, no doubt, many ancient notions and traditions; but these have been so much mixed up with foreign matter, intended to favour the popularity of particular forms of worship or articles of faith, that they cannot be unreservedly recognised as genuine representations of what we have reason to believe the Puranas originally were.

The safest sources for the ancient legends of the Hindus, after the Vedas, are no doubt the two great poems, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The first offers only a few, but they are of a primitive character. The Mahabharata is more fertile in fiction, but it is more miscellaneous, and much that it contains is of equivocal authenticity, and uncertain date. Still it affords many materials that are genuine, and it is evidently the great fountain from which most, if not all, of the Puranas have drawn; as it intimates itself, when it declares that there is no legend current in the world which has not its origin in the Mahabharata.

A work of some extent professing to be part of the Mahabharata may more accurately be ranked with the Pauranik compilations of least authenticity, and latest origin. The Hari Vans'a is chiefly occupied with the adventures of Krishna, but, as introductory to his era, it records particulars of the creation of the world, and of the patriarchal and regal dynasties. This is done with much carelessness and inaccuracy of compilation, as I have had occasion frequently to notice in the following pages. The work has been very industriously translated by M. Langlois.

A comparison of the subjects of the following pages with those of the other Puranas will sufficiently shew that of the whole series the Vishnu most closely conforms to the definition of a Pancha-lakshana Purana, or one which treats of five specified topics. It comprehends them all; and although it has infused a portion of extraneous and sectarial matter, it has done so with sobriety and with judgment, and has not suffered the fervour of its religious zeal to transport it into very wide deviations from the prescribed path. The legendary tales which it has inserted are few, and are conveniently arranged, so that they do not distract the attention of the compiler from objects of more permanent interest and importance.

Book One

The first book of the six, into which the work is divided, is occupied chiefly with the details of creation, primary (Sarga) and secondary (Pratisarga); the first explaining how the universe proceeds from Prakriti, or eternal crude matter; the second, in what manner the forms of things are developed from the elementary substances previously evolved, or how they reappear after their temporary destruction. Both these creations are periodical, but the termination of the first occurs only at the end of the life of Brahma, when not only all the gods and all other forms are annihilated, but the elements are again merged into primary substance, besides which one only spiritual being exists: the latter takes place at the end of every Kalpa, or day of Brahma, and affects only the forms of inferior creatures, and lower worlds, leaving the substance of the universe entire, and sages and gods unharmed. The explanation of these events involves a description of the periods of time upon which they depend. and which are accordingly detailed. Their character has been a source of very unnecessary perplexity to European writers, as they belong to a scheme of chronology wholly mythological, having no reference to any real or supposed history of the Hindus, but applicable, according to their system, to the infinite and eternal revolutions of the universe. In these notions, and in that of the coeternity of spirit and matter, the theogony and cosmogony of the Puranas, as they appear in the Vishnu Purana, belong to and illustrate systems of high antiquity, of which we have only fragmentary traces in the records of other nations.

The course of the elemental creation is in the Vishnu, as in other Puranas, taken from the Sankhya philosophy; but the agency that operates upon passive matter is confusedly exhibited, in consequence of a partial adoption of the illusory theory of the Vedanta philosophy, and the prevalence of the Pauranik doctrine of Pantheism. However incompatible with the independent existence of Pradhana or crude matter, and however incongruous with the separate condition of pure spirit or Purusha, it is declared repeatedly that Vishnu, as one with the supreme being, is not only spirit, but crude matter; and not only the latter, but all visible substance, and Time. He is Purusha, 'spirit;' Pradhana, crude matter; 'Vyakta, 'visible form;' and Kula, 'time.' This cannot but be regarded as a departure from the primitive dogmas of the Hindus, in which the distinctness of the Deity and his works was enunciated; in which upon his willing the world to be, it was; and in which his interposition in creation, held to be inconsistent with the quiescence of perfection, was explained away by the personification of attributes in action, which afterwards came to be considered as real divinities, Brahma, Vishnu, and S'iva, charged severally for a given season with the creation, preservation, and temporary annihilation of material forms. These divinities are in the following pages, consistently with the tendency of a Vaishnava work, declared to be no other than Vishnu. In S'aiva Puranas they are in like manner identified with S'iva. The Puranas thus displaying and explaining the seeming incompatibility, of which there are traces in other ancient mythologies, between three distinct hypostases of one superior deity, and the identification of one or other of those hypostases with their common and separate original.

After the world has been fitted for the reception of living creatures, it is peopled by the will-engendered sons of Brahma, the Prajapatis or patriarchs, and their posterity. It would seem as if a primitive tradition of the descent of mankind from seven holy personages had at first prevailed, but that in the course of time it had been expanded into complicated, and not always consistent, amplification, How could these Rishis or patriarchs have posterity? it was necessary to provide them with wives. In order to account for their existence, the Manu Swayambhuva and his wife Satarupa were added to the scheme, or Brahma becomes twofold, male and female, and daughters are then begotten, who are married to the Prajapatis. Upon this basis various legends of Brahma's double nature, some no doubt as old as the Vedas, have been constructed: but although they may have been derived in some degree from the authentic tradition of the origin of mankind from a single pair, yet the circumstances intended to give more interest and precision to the story are evidently of an allegorical or mystical description, and conduced, in apparently later times, to a coarseness of realization which was neither the letter nor spirit of the original legend. Swayambhuva, the son of the self-born or untreated, and his wife Satarupa, the hundred-formed or multiform, are themselves allegories; and their female descendants, who become the wives of the Rishis, are Faith, Devotion, Content, Intelligence, Tradition, and the like; whilst amongst their posterity we have the different phases of the moon, and the sacrificial fires. In another creation the chief source of creatures is the patriarch Daksha (ability), whose daughters, Virtues or Passions or Astronomical Phenomena, are the mothers of all existing things. These legends, perplexed as they appear to be, seem to admit of allowable solution, in the conjecture that the Prajapatis and Rishis were real personages, the authors of the Hindu system of social, moral, and religious obligations, and the first observers of the heavens, and teachers of astronomical science.

The regal personages of the Swayambhuva Manwantara are but few, but they are described in the outset as governing the earth in the dawn of society, and as introducing agriculture and civilisation. How much of their story rests upon a traditional remembrance of their actions, it would be useless to conjecture, although there is no extravagance in supposing that the legends relate to a period prior to the full establishment in India of the Brahmanical institutions. The legends of Dhruva and Prahlada, which are intermingled with these particulars, are in all probability ancient, but they are amplified, in a strain conformable to the Vaishnava purport of this Purana, by doctrines and prayers asserting the identity of Vishnu with the supreme. It is clear that the stories do not originate with this Purana. In that of Prahlada particularly, as hereafter pointed out, circumstances essential to the completeness of the story are only alluded to, not recounted; shewing indisputably the writer's having availed himself of some prior authority for his narration.

Book Two

The second book opens with a continuation of the kings of the first Manwantara; amongst whom, Bharata is said to have given a name to India, called after him Bharata-varsha. This leads to a detail of the geographical system of the Puranas, with mount Meru, the seven circular continents, and their surrounding oceans, to the limits of the world; all of which are mythological fictions, in which there is little reason to imagine that any topographical truths are concealed. With regard to Bharata, or India, the case is different: the mountains and rivers which are named are readily verifiable, and the cities and nations that are particularized may also in many instances be proved to have had a real existence. The list is not a very long one in the Vishnu Purana, and is probably abridged from some more ample detail like that which the Mahabharata affords, and which, in the hope of supplying information' with respect to a subject yet imperfectly investigated, the ancient political condition of India, I have inserted and elucidated.

The description which this book also contains of the planetary and other spheres is equally mythological, although occasionally presenting practical details and notions in which there is an approach to accuracy. The concluding legend of Bharata--in his former life the king so named, but now a Brahman, who acquires true wisdom, and thereby attains liberation--is palpably an invention of the compiler, and is peculiar to this Purana.

The Third Book

The arrangement of the Vedas and other writings considered sacred by the Hindus, being in fact the authorities of their religious rites and belief, which is described in the beginning of the third book, is of much importance to the history of Hindu literature, and of the Hindu religion. The sage Vyasa is here represented, not as the author, but the arranger or compiler of the Vedas, the Itihasas, and Puranas. His name denotes his character, meaning the 'arranger' or 'distributor;' and the recurrence of many Vyasas, many individuals who new modelled the Hindu scriptures, has nothing in it that is improbable, except the fabulous intervals by which their labours are separated. The rearranging, the refashioning, of old materials, is nothing more than the progress of time would be likely to render necessary. The last recognised compilation is that of Krishna Dwaipayana, assisted by Brahmans, who were already conversant with the subjects respectively assigned to them. They were the members of a college or school, supposed by the Hindus to have flourished in a period more remote, no doubt, than the truth, but not at all unlikely to have been instituted at some time prior to the accounts of India which we owe to Greek writers, and in which we see enough of the system to justify our inferring that it was then entire. That there have been other Vyasas and other schools since that date, that Brahmans unknown to fame have remodelled some of the Hindu scriptures, and especially the Puranas, cannot reasonably be contested, after dispassionately weighing the strong internal evidence which all of them afford of the intermixture of unauthorized and comparatively modern ingredients. But the same internal testimony furnishes proof equally decisive of the anterior existence of ancient materials; and it is therefore as idle as it is irrational to dispute the antiquity or authenticity of the greater portion of the contents of the Puranas, in the face of abundant positive and circumstantial evidence of the prevalence of the doctrines which they teach, the currency of the legends which they narrate, and the integrity of the institutions which they describe, at least three centuries before the Christian era. But the origin and developement of their doctrines, traditions, and institutions, were not the work of a day; and the testimony that establishes their existence three centuries before Christianity, carries it back to a much more remote antiquity, to an antiquity that is probably not surpassed by any of the prevailing fictions, institutions, or belief, of the ancient world.

The remainder of the third book describes the leading institutions of the Hindus, the duties of castes, the obligations of different stages of life, and the celebration of obsequial rites, in a short but primitive strain, and in harmony with the laws of Manu. It is a distinguishing feature of the Vishnu Purana, and it is characteristic of its being the work of an earlier period than most of the Puranas, that it enjoins no sectarial or other acts of supererogation; no Vratas, occasional self-imposed observances; no holidays, no birthdays of Krishna, no nights dedicated to Lakshmi; no sacrifices nor modes of worship other than those conformable to the ritual of the Vedas. It contains no Mahatmyas, or golden legends, even of the temples in which Vishnu is adored.

The Fourth Book

The fourth book contains all that the Hindus have of their ancient history. It is a tolerably comprehensive list of dynasties and individuals; it is a barren record of events. It can scarcely be doubted, however, that much of it is a genuine chronicle of persons, if not of occurrences. That it is discredited by palpable absurdities in regard to the longevity of the princes of the earlier dynasties must be granted, and the particulars preserved of some of them are trivial and fabulous: still there is an inartificial simplicity and consistency in the succession of persons, and a possibility and probability in some of the transactions which give to these traditions the semblance of authenticity, and render it likely that they are not altogether without foundation. At any rate, in the absence of all other sources of information, the record, such as it is, deserves not to be altogether set aside. It is not essential to its credibility or its usefulness that any exact chronological adjustment of the different reigns should be attempted. Their distribution amongst the several Yugas, undertaken by Sir Wm. Jones or his Pandits, finds no countenance from the original texts, farther than an incidental notice of the age in which a particular monarch ruled, or the general fact that the dynasties prior to Krishna precede the time of the great war, and the beginning of the Kali age; both which events we are not obliged, with the Hindus, to place five thousand years ago. To that age the solar dynasty of princes offers ninety-three descents, the lunar but forty-five, though they both commence at the same time. Some names may have been added to the former list, some omitted in the latter; and it seems most likely, that, notwithstanding their synchronous beginning, the princes of the lunar race were subsequent to those of the solar dynasty. They avowedly branched off from the solar line; and the legend of Sudyumna, that explains the connexion, has every appearance of having been contrived for the purpose of referring it to a period more remote than the truth. Deducting however from the larger number of princes a considerable proportion, there is nothing to shock probability in supposing that the Hindu dynasties and their ramifications were spread through an interval of about twelve centuries anterior to the war of the Mahabharata, and, conjecturing that event to have happened about fourteen centuries before Christianity, thus carrying the commencement of the regal dynasties of India to about two thousand six hundred years before that date. This may or may not be too remote; but it is sufficient, in a subject where precision is impossible, to be satisfied with the general impression, that in the dynasties of kings detailed in the Puranas we have a record which, although it cannot fail to have suffered detriment from age, and may have been injured by careless or injudicious compilation, preserves an account, not wholly undeserving of confidence, of the establishment and succession of regular monarchies amongst the Hindus, from as early an era, and for as continuous a duration, as any in the credible annals of mankind.

The circumstances that are told of the first princes have evident relation to the colonization of India, and the gradual extension of the authority of new races over an uninhabited or uncivilized region. It is commonly admitted that the Brahmanical religion and civilization were brought into India from without. Certainly, there are tribes on the borders, and in the heart of the country, who are still not Hindus; and passages in the Ramayana and Mahabharata and Manu, and the uniform traditions of the people themselves, point to a period when Bengal, Orissa, and the whole of the Dekhin, were inhabited by degraded or outcaste, that is, by barbarous, tribes. The traditions of the Puranas confirm these views, but they lend no assistance to the determination of the question whence the Hindus came; whether from a central Asiatic nation, as Sir Wm. Jones supposed, or from the Caucasian mountains, the plains of Babylonia, or the borders of the Caspian, as conjectured by Klaproth, Vans Kennedy, and Schlegel. The affinities of the Sanscrit language prove a common origin of the now widely scattered nations amongst whose dialects they are traceable, and render it unquestionable that they must all have spread abroad from some centrical spot in that part of the globe first inhabited by mankind, according to the inspired record. Whether any indication of such an event be discoverable in the Vedas, remains to be determined; but it would have been obviously incompatible with the Pauranik system to have referred the origin of Indian princes and principalities to other than native sources. We need not therefore expect from them any information as to the foreign derivation of the Hindus.

We have, then, wholly insufficient means for arriving at any information concerning the ante-Indian period of Hindu history, beyond the general conclusion derivable from the actual presence of barbarous and apparently aboriginal tribes--from the admitted progressive extension of Hinduism into parts of India where it did not prevail when the code of Manu was compiled--from the general use of dialects in India, more or less copious, which are different from Sanscrit--and from the affinities of that language with forms of speech current in the western world--that a people who spoke Sanscrit, and followed the religion of the Vedas, came into India, in some very distant age, from lands west of the Indus. Whether the date and circumstances of their immigration will ever be ascertained is extremely doubtful, but it is not difficult to form a plausible outline of their early site and progressive colonization.

The earliest seat of the Hindus within the confines of Hindusthan was undoubtedly the eastern confines of the Panjab. The holy land of Manu and the Puranas lies between the Drishadwati and Saraswati rivers, the Caggar and Sursooty of our barbarous maps. Various adventures of the first princes and most famous sages occur in this vicinity; and the Asramas, or religious domiciles, of several of the latter are placed on the banks of the Saraswati. According to some authorities, it was the abode of Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas and Puranas; and agreeably to another, when on one occasion the Vedas had fallen into disuse, and been forgotten, the Brahmans were again instructed in them by Saraswata, the son of Saraswati [*89]. One of the most distinguished of the tribes of the Brahmans is known as the Saraswata; and the same word is employed by Mr. Colebrooke to denote that modification of Sanscrit which is termed generally Prakrit, and which in this case he supposes to have been the language of "the Saraswata nation, which occupied the banks of the river Saraswati [*91]." The river itself receives its appellation from Saraswati, the goddess of learning, under whose auspices the sacred literature of the Hindus assumed shape and authority. These indications render it certain, that whatever seeds were imported from without, it was in the country adjacent to the Saraswati river that they were first planted, and cultivated and reared in Hindusthan.

The tract of land thus assigned for the first establishment of Hinduism in India is of very circumscribed extent, and could not have been the site of any numerous tribe or nation. The traditions that evidence the early settlement of the Hindus in this quarter, ascribe to the settlers more of a philosophical and religious, than of a secular character, and combine with the very narrow bounds of the holy land to render it possible that the earliest emigrants were the members, not of a political, so much as of a religious community; that they were a colony of priests, not in the restricted sense in which we use the term, but in that in which it still applies in India, to an Agrahara, a village or hamlet of Brahmans, who, although married, and having families, and engaging in tillage, in domestic duties, and in the conduct of secular interests affecting the community, are still supposed to devote their principal attention to sacred study and religious offices. A society of this description, with its artificers and servants, and perhaps with a body of martial followers, might have found a home in the Brahma-vartta of Manu, the land which thence was entitled 'the holy,' or more literally 'the Brahman, region;' and may have communicated to the rude, uncivilized, unlettered aborigines the rudiments of social organization, literature, and religion; partly, in all probability, brought along with them, and partly devised and fashioned by degrees for the growing necessities of new conditions of society. Those with whom this civilization commenced would have had ample inducements to prosecute their successful work, and in the course of time the improvement which germinated on the banks of the Saraswati was extended beyond the borders of the Jumna and the Ganges.

We have no satisfactory intimation of the stages by which the political organization of the people of Upper India traversed the space between the Saraswati and the more easterly region, where it seems to have taken a concentrated form, and whence it diverged in various directions, throughout Hindustan. The Manu of the present period, Vaivaswata, the son of the sun, is regarded as the founder of Ayodhya; and that city continued to be the capital of the most celebrated branch of his descendants, the posterity of Ikshwaku. The Vishnu Purana evidently intends to describe the radiation of conquest or colonization from this spot, in the accounts it gives of the dispersion of Vaivaswata's posterity: and although it is difficult to understand what could have led early settlers in India to such a site, it is not inconveniently situated as a commanding position, whence emigrations might proceed to the east, the west, and the south. This seems to have happened: a branch from the house of Ikshwaku spread into Tirhut, constituting the Maithila kings; and the posterity of another of Vaivaswata's sons reigned at Vaisali in southern Tirhut or Saran.

The most adventurous emigrations, however, took place through the lunar dynasty, which, as observed above, originates from the solar, making in fact but one race and source for the whole. Leaving out of consideration the legend of Sudyumna's double transformation, the first prince of Pratishthana, a city south from Ayodhya, was one of Vaivaswata's children, equally with Ikshvaku. The sons of Pururavas, the second of this branch, extended, by themselves or their posterity, in every direction: to the east to Kas'i, Magadha, Benares, and Behar; southwards to the Vindhya hills, and across them to Vidarbha or Berar; westwards along the Narmada to Kus'asthali or Dwaraka in Guzerat; and in a north-westerly direction to Mathura and Hastinapura. These movements are very distinctly discoverable amidst the circumstances narrated in the fourth book of the Vishnu Purana, and are precisely such as might be expected from a radiation of colonies from Ayodhya. Intimations also occur of settlements in Banga, Kalinga, and the Dakhin; but they are brief and indistinct, and have the appearance of additions subsequent to the comprehension of those countries within the pale of Hinduism.

Besides these traces of migration and settlement, several curious circumstances, not likely to be unauthorized inventions, are hinted in these historical traditions. The distinction of castes was not fully developed prior to the colonization. Of the sons of Vaivaswata, some, as kings, were Kshatriyas; but one, founded a tribe of Brahmans, another became a Vais'ya, and a fourth a S'udra. It is also said of other princes, that they established the four castes amongst their subjects [*92]. There are also various notices of Brahmanical Gotras, or families, proceding from Kshatriya races [*93]: and there are several indications of severe struggles between the two ruling castes, not for temporal, but for spiritual dominion, the right to teach the Vedas. This seems to be the especial purport of the inveterate hostility that prevailed between the Brahman Vas'ishtha and the Kshatriya Viswamitra, who, as the Ramayana relates, compelled the gods to make him a Brahman also, and whose posterity became very celebrated as the Kaus'ika Brahmans. Other legends, again, such as Daksha's sacrifice, denote sectarial strife; and the legend of Paras'urama reveals a conflict even for temporal authority between the two ruling castes. More or less weight will be attached to these conjectures, according to the temperament of different inquirers; but, even whilst fully aware of the facility with which plausible deductions may cheat the fancy, and little disposed to relax all curb upon the imagination, I find it difficult to regard these legends as wholly unsubstantial fictions, or devoid of all resemblance to the realities of the past.

After the date of the great war, the Vishnu Purana, in common with those Puranas which contain similar lists, specifies kings and dynasties with greater precision, and offers political and chronological particulars, to which on the score of probability there is nothing to object. In truth their general accuracy has been incontrovertibly established. Inscriptions on columns of stone, on rocks, on coins, decyphered only of late years, through the extraordinary ingenuity and perseverance of Mr. James Prinsep, have verified the names of races, and titles of princes--the Gupta and Andhra Rajas, mentioned in the Puranas--and have placed beyond dispute the identity of Chandragupta and Sandrocoptus: thus giving us a fixed point from which to compute the date of other persons and events. Thus the Vishnu Purana specifies the interval between Chandragupta and the great war to be eleven hundred years; and the occurrence of the latter little more than fourteen centuries B. C., as shewn in my observations on the passage [*94], remarkably concurs with inferences of the like date from different premises. The historical notices that then follow are considerably confused, but they probably afford an accurate picture of the political distractions of India at the time when they were written; and much of the perplexity arises from the corrupt state of the manuscripts, the obscure brevity of the record, and our total want of the means of collateral illustration.

The Fifth Book

The fifth book of the Vishnu Purana is exclusively occupied with the life of Krishna. This is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Purana, and is one argument against its antiquity. It is possible, though not yet proved, that Krishna as an Avatara of Vishnu, is mentioned in an indisputably genuine text of the Vedas. He is conspicuously prominent in the Mahabharata, but very contradictorily described there. The part that he usually performs is that of a mere mortal, although the passages are numerous that attach divinity to his person. There are, however, no descriptions in the Mahabharata of his juvenile frolics, of his sports in Vrindavan, his pastimes with the cow-boys, or even his destruction of the Asuras sent to kill him. These stories have all a modern complexion: they do not harmonize with the tone of the ancient legends, which is generally grave, and sometimes majestic: they are the creations of a puerile taste, and grovelling imagination. These Chapters of the Vishnu Purana offer some difficulties as to their originality: they are the same as those on the same subject in the Brahma Purana: they are not very dissimilar to those of the Bhagavata. The latter has some incidents which the Vishnu has not, and may therefore be thought to have improved upon the prior narrative of the latter. On the other hand, abridgment is equally a proof of posteriority as amplification. The simpler style of the Vishnu Purana is however in favour of its priority; and the miscellaneous composition of the Brahma Purana renders it likely to have borrowed these chapters from the Vishnu. The life of Krishna in the Hari-vans'a and the Brahma-vaivartta are indisputably of later date.

The Sixth Book

The last book contains an account of the dissolution of the world, in both its major and minor cataclysms; and in the particulars of the end of all things by fire and water, as well as in the principle of their perpetual renovation, presents a faithful exhibition of opinions that were general in the ancient world [*95]. The metaphysical annihilation of the universe, by the release of the spirit from bodily existence, offers, as already remarked, other analogies to doctrines and practices taught by Pythagoras and Plato, and by the Platonic Christians of later days.

Date of the Vishnu Purana

The Vishnu Purana has kept very clear of particulars from which an approximation to its date may be conjectured. No place is described of which the sacredness has any known limit, nor any work cited of probable recent composition. The Vedas, the Puranas, other works forming the body of Sanscrit literature, are named; and so is the Mahabharata, to which therefore it is subsequent. Both Bauddhas and Jains are adverted to. It was therefore written before the former had disappeared; but they existed in some parts of India as late as the twelfth century at least; and it is probable that the Purana was compiled before that period. The Gupta kings reigned in the seventh century; the historical record of the Purana which mentions them was therefore later: and there seems little doubt that the same alludes to the first incursions of the Mohammedans, which took place in the eighth century; which brings it still lower. In describing the latter dynasties, some, if not all, of which were no doubt contemporary, they are described as reigning altogether one thousand seven hundred and ninety-six years. Why this duration should have been chosen does not appear, unless, in conjunction with the number of years which are said to have elapsed between the great war and the last of the Andhra dynasty, which preceded these different races, and which amounted to two thousand three hundred and fifty, the compiler was influenced by the actual date at which he wrote. The aggregate of the two periods would be the Kali year 4146, equivalent to A. D. 1045. There are some variety and indistinctness in the enumeration of the periods which compose this total, but the date which results from it is not unlikely to be an approximation to that of the Vishnu Purana.

It is the boast of inductive philosophy, that it draws its conclusions from the careful observation and accumulation of facts; and it is equally the business of all philosophical research to determine its facts before it ventures upon speculation. This procedure has not been observed in the investigation of the mythology and traditions of the Hindus. Impatience to generalize has availed itself greedily of whatever promised to afford materials for generalization; and the most erroneous views have been confidently advocated, because the guides to which their authors trusted were ignorant or insufficient. The information gleaned by Sir Wm. Jones was gathered in an early season of Sanscrit study, before the field was cultivated. The same may be said of the writings of Paulinus a St. Barolomaeo, with the further disadvantage of his having been imperfectly acquainted with the Sanscrit language and literature, and his veiling his deficiencies under loftiness of pretension and a prodigal display of misapplied erudition. The documents to which Wilford trusted proved to be in great part fabrications, and where genuine, were mixed up with so much loose and unauthenticated matter, and so overwhelmed with extravagance of speculation, that his citations need to be carefully and skilfully sifted, before they can be serviceably employed. The descriptions of Ward are too deeply tinctured by his prejudices to be implicitly confided in; and they are also derived in a great measure from the oral or written communications of Bengali pandits, who are not in general very deeply read in the authorities of their mythology. The accounts of Polier were in like manner collected from questionable sources, and his Mythologie des Hindous presents a heterogeneous mixture of popular and Pauranik tales, of ancient traditions, and legends apparently invented for the occasion, which renders the publication worse than useless, except in the hands of those who can distinguish the pure metal from the alloy. Such are the authorities to which Maurice, Faber, and Creuzer have exclusively trusted in their description of the Hindu mythology, and it is no marvel that there should have been an utter confounding of good and bad in their selection of materials, and an inextricable mixture of truth and error in their conclusions. Their labours accordingly are far from entitled to that confidence which their learning and industry would else have secured; and a sound and comprehensive survey of the Hindu system is still wanting to the comparative analysis of the religious opinions of the ancient world, and to a satisfactory elucidation of an important chapter in the history of the human race. It is with the hope of supplying some of the necessary means for the accomplishment of these objects, that the following pages have been translated.

Conclusion

The translation of the Vishnu Purana has been made from a collation of various manuscripts in my possession. I had three when I commenced the work, two in the Devanagari, and one in the Bengali character: a fourth, from the west of India, was given to me by Major Jervis, when some progress had been made: and in conducting the latter half of the translation through the press, I have compared it with three other copies in the library of the East India Company. All these copies closely agree; presenting no other differences than occasional varieties of reading, owing chiefly to the inattention or inaccuracy of the transcriber. Four of the copies were accompanied by a commentary, essentially the sane, although occasionally varying; and ascribed, in part at least, to two different scholiasts. The annotations on the first two books and the fifth are in two MSS. said to be the work of S'ridhara Yati, the disciple of Parananda, and who is therefore the same as S'ridhara Swami, the commentator on the Bhagavata. In the other three books these two MSS. concur with other two in naming the commentator Ratnagarbha Bhatta, who in those two is the author of the notes on the entire work. The introductory verses of his comment specify him to be the disciple of Vidya-vachaspati, the son of Hiranyagarbha, and grandson of Madhava, who composed his commentary by desire of Suryakara, son of Ratinath, Mis'ra, son of Chandrakara, hereditary ministers of some sovereign who is not particularized. In the illustrations which are attributed to these different writers there is so much conformity, that one or other is largely indebted to his predecessor. They both refer to earlier commentaries. S'ridhara cites the works of Chit-sukha-yoni and others, both more extensive and more concise; between which, his own, which he terms Atma- or Swa-prakasa, 'self-illuminator,' holds an intermediate character. Ratnagarbha entitles his, Vaishnavakuta chandrika, 'the moonlight of devotion to Vishnu.' The dates of these commentators are not ascertainable, as far as I am aware, from any of the particulars which they have specified.

In the notes which I have added to the translation, I have been desirous chiefly of comparing the statements of the text with those of other Puranas, and pointing out the circumstances in which they differ or agree; so as to render the present publication a sort of concordance to the whole, as it is not very probable that many of them will be published or translated. The Index that follows has been made sufficiently copious to answer the purposes of a mythological and historical dictionary, as far as the Puranas, or the greater number of them, furnish, materials.

In rendering the text into English, I have adhered to it as literally as was compatible with some regard to the usages of English composition. In general the original presents few difficulties. The style of the Puranas is very commonly humble and easy, and the narrative is plainly and unpretendingly told. In the addresses to the deities, in the expatiations upon the divine nature, in the descriptions of the universe, and in argumentative and metaphysical discussion, there occur passages in which the difficulty arising from the subject itself is enhanced by the brief and obscure manner in which it is treated. On such occasions I derived much aid from the commentary, but it is possible that I may have sometimes misapprehended and misrepresented the original; and it is also possible that I may have sometimes failed to express its purport with sufficient precision to have made it intelligible. I trust, however, that this will not often be the case, and that the translation of the Vishnu Purana will be of service and of interest to the few, who in these times of utilitarian selfishness, conflicting opinion, party virulence, and political agitation, can find a restingplace for their thoughts in the tranquil contemplation of those yet living pictures of the ancient world which are exhibited by the literature and mythology of the Hindus.

Introduction of All Puranas

CHARACTER-BUILDING.

SELF-DE-HYPNOTISATION.

THE ROLE OF PRAYER. = THOUGHT: CREATIVE AND EXHAUSTIVE. MEDITATION EXERCISE.

HIGHER REASON AND JUDGMENT= CONQUEST OF FEAR.

THE GREAT EGOIST--BALI

QUEEN CHUNDALAI, THE GREAT YOGIN

CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

THE WAY TO BLESSED LIBERATION

MUDRAS MOVE THE KUNDALINI

LOCATION OF KUNDALINI

SAMADHI YOGA