Curiosities of Superstition, and Sketches of Some Unrevealed Religions

by W. H. Davenport Adams

CHAPTER V.

THE HINDU MYTHOLOGY: AND THE VISHNU PURANA.

The word Purana means “old,” and the original object of the Puranas would seem to have been the preservation of ancient mythological fictions and historical traditions. But in the form in which they have come down to us they do something more than this. They comprehend, more or less thoroughly, the five following subjects:—1, Primary creation, or cosmogony; 2, Secondary creation, or the destruction and renovation of worlds, including chronology; 3, Genealogy of gods and patriarchs; 4, Reigns of the Manus, or periods called Manwantaras; and 5, History, or such particulars as are extant of the princes of the solar and lunar races, and of their descendants to modern times. According to Professor Wilson, they are evidently derived from the same religious system as the Rámáyana and Mahábhárata, or from what he calls the mytho-heroic stage of Hindu belief. “They present, however, peculiarities which designate their belonging to a later period, and to an important modification in the progress of opinion. They repeat the theoretical cosmogony of the two great poems; they expound and systematise the chronological computations; and they give a more definite and connected representation of the mythological fictions and the historical traditions. But besides these and other particulars, which may be derivable from an old, if not from a primitive era, they offer characteristic peculiarities of a more modern description, in the paramount importance which they assign to individual divinities, in the variety and purport of the rites and observances addressed to them, and in the invention of new legends illustrative of the power and graciousness of those deities, and of the efficacy of implicit devotion to them.”

The form of composition adopted in the Puranas is that of a dialogue, in which its contents are related by one imaginary individual in reply to another. Several dialogues are eventually woven together; and they purport to have been held on different occasions between different individuals, in consequence of similar questions having been asked. Usually the immediate narrator is Lomaharshaná or Romaharshána, the disciple of Vyasa, who, as Plato did for Socrates, communicates to the reader his great master’s utterances. The Vyasa or compiler here meant was Krishna Dwaipáyana, the son of Parásara; it is said of him that he taught the Vedas and Puranas to various pupils, but it seems more probable that he was at the head of a school or college, the members of which moulded the sacred literature of the Hindus into its present form.

There appear to have been eighteen Puranas: namely, 1, Brahma; 2, Padma; 3, Vaishnava; 4, Saiva; 5, Bhagavata; 6, Náradíya; 7, Márkándeya; 8, Agneya; 9, Bhavishya; 10, Brahma Vaivarta; 11, Lainga; 12, Váráha; 13, Skánda; 14, Vámana; 15, Kaurma; 16, Mátsya; 17, Gáruda; 18, Bráhmanda.

The Vishnu Purana is described as that in which Parásara, beginning with the events of the Varáha Kalpa, expounds man’s moral and religious obligations in about seven thousand stanzas. It is divided into six books:—

The first deals 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 way “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; the first does not end until the life of Brahma ends, when not only the gods and all other forms are annihilated, but the elements are resolved into the primary substance, besides which one only spiritual being exists. The latter occurs at the end of every Kalpa, æon, or day of Brahma, and is wholly limited to the forms of inferior creatures and the lower worlds; leaving untouched sages and gods and the substance of the heavens. A description of the ages or periods of time on which these events depend is involved in the explanation; and it is given accordingly in wearisome detail. Their character has been a source of very unnecessary perplexity to European writers; for they belong to a wholly mythological scheme of chronology, which has no reference to any real or supposed history of the Hindus, but prefigures, according to their system, the infinite and eternal revolutions of the universe.

By a singular incongruity the existence of Pradhána, or crude matter, is identified with Vishnu, who is declared to be both spirit and crude matter, and not only crude matter, but all visible substance, and Time. He is Purusha, “spirit;” Pradhána, “crude matter;” Vyakta, “visible form;” and Kála, “time.” “This,” says Professor Wilson, “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 Siva, charged severally, for a given season, with the creation, preservation, and temporary annihilation of material forms.” In the Vishnu Purana, these divinities are declared to be no other than Vishnu.

The earth having been duly prepared for the reception of living creatures, it was peopled by the will-begotten sons of Brahma, the Prajapatis or patriarchs. But it was necessary to provide these “grey forefathers” of the early world with wives. For this purpose, the Manu Swayambhuva and his wife Satarupa, were invented; and their daughters supplied the patriarchs with female partners. Numerous legends were built up on this basis, and the whole story assumed an allegorical form. Swayhambhuva, the son of the self-born or uncreated, and his wife Satarupa, the hundred-formed or multiform, are themselves allegories; and their female descendants, who became the wives of the Rishis, are Faith, Devotion, Content, Intelligence, Tradition, and the like; whilst among their posterity are found the different phases of the moon and the sacrificial fires. There are other legends in explanation of the peopling of the earth. All seem to indicate 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 genealogy is traced of the royal personages of this first race or dynasty, and is continued into the second book; after which comes 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. This (except so far as India or Bharata is concerned) is purely mythological. In the early portion of the third book, the arrangement of the Vedas and other sacred writings of the Hindus is described. Then follows an account of the principal Hindu institutions, the duties of castes, the obligations of different stages of life, and the celebration of funeral rites, in a brief 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 holy days, no birthdays of Krishna, no nights dedicated to Lakshmi; no sacrifices or modes of worship other than those conformable to the ritual of the Vedas. It contains no Máhálinyas or golden legends, even of the temples in which Vishnu is adored.”