12. Elements of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (Overall frame)

The Viṣṇu Purāṇa is framed simply as a dialogue between two legendary sages, Parāśara and his disciple Maitreya. This in itself distinguishes the Viṣṇu Purāṇa from most other purāṇas and the epics, which have much more complex framing structures. Typically, the primary storyteller is a wandering seer, such as Lomaharṣaṇa or Ugraśravas, who arrives at the Naimiṣa forest, where he narrates the story to the assembled sages led by Śaunaka. The narrator’s story may be a direct account, but more often it is the repetition of another story told by a third or even a fourth party.

Parāśara explains to Maitreya that the Viṣṇu Purāṇa was first related by the original creator deity, Brahmā, grandsire of the world. From Brahmā, the narrative was passed orally from one listener to another. The lineage as recounted in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa consists of about twenty figures and includes divine sages, various semi-divine serpents, a river goddess and some residents of the underworld, before it finally reaches Parāśara, who relays the text in full to his inquisitive disciple.

Both Parāśara and Maitreya are prominent figures elsewhere in Sanskrit literature. Parāśara was the grandson of Vasiṣṭha, one of the original Seven Seers who are present at the beginning of every era, and domestic chaplain to Rāma and the Solar Dynasty. Parāśara is said to be the disciple of the great law-giver, Yājñavalkya, and was the Veda-vyāsa, or ‘arranger of the Vedas’, in a previous age. Parāśara’s son Vyāsa, who arranged the Vedas in the ‘current’ age, was also the composer and transmitter of many seminal texts, including the Mahābhārata and many of the purāṇas. Parāśara himself appears as a character in the Mahābhārata as the great-grandfather of both the Kauravas and the Pāṇḍavas, the two warring families of cousins whose conflict lies at the heart of the epic. Another of Parāśara’s grandsons (also through Vyāsa) was the naked sage Śuka, who recited the later Vaiṣṇava classic, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Thus, Parāśara and his lineage are associated with three of the most important genres of Sanskrit literature: Vedas, purāṇas and the epics.

Like his guru, Maitreya is a significant stock character in the intertextual network that unites many threads of the Sanskritic literary imagination. Maitreya appears as a fully fledged sage in the Mahābhārata, where he attempts to persuade the warring parties to make peace. After the cataclysmic war has finished, and while wandering the depopulated world, Maitreya comes upon Vidura, another prominent figure. Maitreya teaches Vidura about the world and the nature of reality. This discourse constitutes an important section of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa mentioned above.

The dialogue between Parāśara and Maitreya, which constitutes the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, takes place in deep mythological time. At one point, Parāśara mentions that the ‘current’ ruling monarch is the king named Parīkṣit (4.20.13). This character was the grandson of Arjuna, one of the five Pāṇḍava brothers, the heroes of the Mahābhārata, and one of the few to survive the war. We know that Parāśara delivered this discourse long after Arjuna’s demise. This same king Parīkṣit is said to have listened to the Bhāgavata Purāṇa on his deathbed. Thus, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa is positioned in mythological time after the Mahābhārata and before the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and is fixed firmly between these two great classics of the Sanskrit archive.

Each of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa’s six books and many intermediate sections begin with Maitreya asking questions: What is the nature of the world? How did the gods and other beings arise? Who are the Manus? And so on. When his guru has answered in full, Maitreya usually replies, ‘You have told me everything I asked about, now tell me about this’, and initiates a fresh topic. This dialogic structure provides a clear framework for the narrative. It breaks the flow into manageable units and serves to focus the audience’s attention on the matter in hand. It also provides some narrative tension that draws the account forward.

Parāśara includes many subnarratives in his answers to Maitreya’s questions. As early as the second chapter of the first book, for example, he recounts a story that his grandfather, Vasiṣṭha, had once told him. The Viṣṇu Purāṇa is mercifully free of the complex, multiple embedded narratives that are common in other purāṇas and other genres. Texts such as the epics and fable literature (kathā) often have many levels of narrative framing: stories within stories within stories—up to five layers deep in the case of the Pañcatantra (Taylor 2007: 28). The overall structure of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa is relatively simple, reaching a maximum of three layers of narrative. At its most complex, Parāśara tells Maitreya the story of ‘Foolish’ Bharata, in which Bharata quotes the sage Ṛbhu lecturing Nidāgha on the subject of the highest truth (2.13–16). Elsewhere, Parāśara tells a story about how Bhīṣma recounted an episode he heard from a brahmin from Kaliṅga. That brahmin heard the story from a certain sage who could remember his death at the end of a previous lifetime (3.7). All in all, the dialogic structure of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa remains relatively easy to follow.

About 80 per cent of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa is written in verse, and the great bulk of this is in a metre called Anuṣṭubh, consisting of four half-lines of eight syllables each. Within each half-line, the rhythm of short and long syllables is generally maintained. Anuṣṭubh is the ‘vanilla’ standard for Sanskrit narrative, epic and purāṇic literature. The fact that so much is composed in verse reminds us that it is to be chanted or, better still, sung. That is the reason I chose the medium of blank verse to translate the Sanskrit Anuṣṭubhs of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa and have tried to maintain a certain rhythm where appropriate in acknowledgement of the nature of the root text.

The remaining 20 per cent of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa—almost the whole of the fourth book—is written in prose. Why is this? This book, which describes the lineages and deeds of the legendary Solar and Lunar dynasties, contains many genealogical lists. There are similar lists in other parts of the text in verse, so it cannot be argued that prose is better suited to genealogy. Similarly, the narrative sections of Book Four, as opposed to the genealogical passages, are not essentially different from narratives in other parts of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that, to put it politely, the purāṇas are highly intertextual. Put less politely, some sections appear to have been cobbled together from other sources. Was Book Four included using a simple ‘cut and paste’ process from some other prose text? A quick search for passages similar to random samples from this book failed to reveal identical text elsewhere, but a systematic survey might provide more insights. I have translated the Viṣṇu Purāṇa’s Sanskrit prose passages into English prose.

If the form of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa is a combination of verse and prose, we can think of its content as being of four kinds: narratives, genealogies, songs of praise and didactic material. The narratives are the raison d’être for any purāṇa, because, as mentioned above, the word purāṇa itself suggests ‘tales of ancient times’ or, perhaps, ‘ancient accounts’. Narratives form the backbone of the text and cover the five themes that define the genre: the creation of the world, its subsequent re-creation, the origin of the gods and sages, the Manus and their reigns as well as the deeds of the kings of the Solar and Lunar dynasties.

But what is the function of the long genealogical lists found throughout the Viṣṇu Purāṇa? For the reader of an English translation they may not be the most edifying or enjoyable reading experience, as they closely resemble the ‘He begat … He begat …’ passages of the Old Testament. I suggest they fulfil four functions. First, genealogies of both legendary ‘human’ lineages, the Solar and Lunar dynasties, begin with Brahmā, the original creator deity. This divine origin ultimately lends sanctity and authority to every member of the lineage. In this sense, the genealogical lists provide legitimacy. Second, the lists demonstrate, for anyone with sufficient detective skills, the relationship between every significant character in the purāṇic thought-world. Third, they provide the logical framework for the narratives. Much of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa is in mythical ‘chronological’ order. When a genealogical list reaches a significant character, the authors press ‘pause’ and insert narratives relevant to that individual. The fourth possible function of these passages is that they offer an opportunity for the accumulation of merit. This aspect is suggested in part by contemporary oral performance of purāṇic discourse. In these events, the simple act of hearing the words is regarded as meritorious (Taylor 2016). This idea is backed up by the Viṣṇu Purāṇa itself when Parāśara instructs his disciple:

As the saying goes, ‘The lineage of one who reflects each day on Manu’s family, which descends from Brahmā, is never broken.’ You should therefore listen to this lineage from start to finish, Maitreya, as it will wash away all sins. (4.1.4–5)

In addition to the narratives and genealogical material, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa includes more than twenty songs of praise of the deity. These are known as stotra or stuti in Sanskrit and are one of the most important features of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa and other works of Vaiṣṇava Bhakti literature. These stutis share a number of prominent themes: Viṣṇu is the creator, preserver and destroyer of the universe; he is without beginning or end; he is free from all qualities and pervades all creation. He is the Absolute, the highest state and puruṣottama, the supreme spirit. He abides within all beings, including gods, mortals, plants and animals. These songs are sung by a wide variety of characters, including the Earth herself, other deities, sages, humans and even the outstanding demon Prahlāda. In contemporary performance of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, these songs of praise are regarded as the most important elements of the discourse (Taylor 2016: 85), and it is easy to imagine this was the case in oral performance of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa in premodern times.

The didactic material—largely confined to the third book, ‘Society’—deals with the details and practicalities of day-to-day life, from birth to death and everything in between, dwelling in considerable detail on the performance of śrāddha offerings to nourish one’s immediate ancestors. I will return to this in the summary of Book Three below.

As indicated above, the organisation of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa is largely ‘chronological’, beginning with the creation of the world, running through to the ‘present’, but also looking forward to the future when the world will come to an end. That is not to say the whole text flows smoothly, as there are several discontinuities in the narrative. Examples are Parāśara’s praise of Lakṣmī (1.8.16–34), a hymn to the syllable Oṃ (3.3.22–31) and especially the story of how Kṛṣṇa won the Syamantaka jewel (4.13). Chapters Five to Seven in the sixth book, ‘Dissolution’, which present a debate about the relative benefits of yoga and sacrifice, seem to have been tacked on to the end of the text. It is impossible to say whether this is what some putative ‘original’ creator of the text intended or whether later scholars or scribes added these passages. In any case, from a stylistic and narrative point of view, these sections present noticeable discontinuities.

Other Purana Concepts:

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Discover the significance of concepts within the article: ‘12. Elements of the Visnu Purana (Overall frame)’. Further sources in the context of Purana might help you critically compare this page with similair documents:

Pandava, Mahabharata, Bhagavata Purana, Vishnupurana, Yajnavalkya, Katha, Anushtubh, Naimisha forest, Songs of praise, Chronological order, Solar Dynasty, Meritorious discourse.