time and space exist, and the accessible and gracious Lord whom worshippers
may encounter in a loving relationship.
It would thus be possible to speak of Pura ̄n.ic religion as monotheistic. Yet the
Pura ̄n.as bring together a great many mythical themes, and in doing so provide
several frameworks into which various divine figures can be fitted at different
levels. There is the “triple form” (trimu ̄rti) in which the cosmic functions of cre-
ation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahma ̄,
Vis.n.u, and S ́iva respectively. There are the avata ̄ras, the “descents” which the
Supreme God makes into the human context. These were originally associated
with Vis.n.u alone, and perhaps started from a nucleus of four found in the
Na ̄ra ̄yan.ı ̄yaparvan, a late section of the Maha ̄bha ̄rata(boar, man-lion, dwarf,
human being, Mbh.12.337.35). Within the Pura ̄n.as lists of different length are
found (e.g. Matsya47.237–48/Va ̄yu98.71–104/Brahma ̄n.d.a2.3.73.72–105a: 3
divine and 7 human forms; Bha ̄gavata1.3.6–26: 22 forms: Garud.a1.202: 19),
only occasionally (e.g. Agni2.1–16.27) coinciding with the eventual standard
list of 10: fish, tortoise, boar, man-lion, dwarf, Paras ́ura ̄ma, Ra ̄ma Da ̄s ́arathi,
Kr.s.n.a (or Balara ̄ma), Buddha, and Kalki. These figures open up different seams
of Vais.n.ava mythology, making room within it for another supreme figure besides
Vis.n.u himself. This is Kr.s.n.a, already the Supreme God of the Bhagavadgı ̄ta ̄, and
supplied by the Pura ̄n.as (e.g. Vis.n.u5;Bha ̄gavata10) with a biography which gave
him a universal appeal in human terms as well as divine. Although the Pura ̄n.as
also present S ́iva as having avata ̄ras(e.g. S ́iva:S ́atarudrasam.hita ̄), these appear to
be modeled on their Vais.n.ava counterparts. The network of divinities which
seems to be more authentically S ́aiva appears to be that provided by S ́iva’s family:
his wife Uma ̄/Pa ̄rvatı ̄ (herself a form of the Supreme Godhead seen as feminine)
and their sons Gan.es ́a and Skanda/Ka ̄rttikeya.
In whatever form the Supreme God may be envisaged, the Pura ̄n.as are in
general agreement as to the temporal and spatial dimensions of the cosmos over
which he/she is supreme. Time is projected on two scales, human and divine. A
day and night of the gods is the equivalent of a human year, so that a divine year
is 360 human years. As in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata, human “history” is divided into
four ages (yugas), the kr.ta,treta ̄,dva ̄para, and kali, joined together by “twilight”
periods. Each yuga lasts for thousands of divine years, but their duration
becomes progressively shorter and their religious and moral characteristics dete-
riorate from one age to the next, until they are renewed as the next kr.tayuga
comes round. A thousand of these caturyugaperiods constitute a day of Brahma ̄,
which is called a kalpa. (Although Brahma ̄ is never regarded as supreme in the
Pura ̄n.as his status, as creator of the trailokya, the triple world of gods, mortals,
and demons, is much higher than that of the other devas, and he therefore has
much longer days than theirs.)
A significant feature of the yugascheme, in both the Maha ̄bha ̄rataand the
Pura ̄n.as, is that the time of narration is somewhere in the kaliyuga, usually
regarded as having begun with the death of Kr.s.n.a (cf. Bh1.18.6; Vis.n.u
5.38.8/Brahma212.8). This cannot really be said to be a pessimistic view of life.
the pura ̄n.as 139