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,