The Vishnu Purana

Vishnu Puran is believed to be one of the most important Puranas, if not the most valuable ancient record of the faith called Sanatan Dharma. Its stories reveal about the various exploits of Vishnu incarnations. In rendering this holy text into English, the attention has been paid to put only those details that have certain fundamental truths of life. Hence, in this work those details have been deliberately omitted which may appear rather confusing or uninteresting to the reader not having the initiation in the sacred love. The main thrust of this attempt has been to show a clear glimpse of our ancient hermitage.

Hindu mythology and tradition is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1864. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature.Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

The Vishnu Purana is a religious Hindu text and one of the eighteen Mahapuranas. It is considered one of the most important Puranas and has been given the name Puranaratna (gem of Puranas). Vishnu Purana includes many stories well known in Vedic tradition, including the various avatars of God Vishnu and the life of his complete incarnation, Krishna. Presented as a dialogue between Parashara and his disciple Maitreya and divided into six parts, the major topics discussed include creation, stories of battles fought between asuras and devas, the Avatars (divine descents) of Vishnu and genealogy and stories of legendary kings. Vishnu Purana ascribes its authorship to Veda Vyasa. The Padma Purana categorizes Vishnu Purana as a Sattva Purana (Purana which represents goodness and purity). In Vishnu Purana, worship of Vishnu has been given a lot of importance. Vishnu Purana puts forward that the worship of Vishnu could enable man to obtain the consummation of all earthly or materialistic desires and leads man to attain moksha or liberation from cycle of births and deaths in the material world. Similar to Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu Purana declares Vishnu or Narayana as Para Brahman Supreme God who creates unlimited universes and enters each one of them as Lord of Universe. God Narayana engages in creation of 14 worlds within the universe as Brahma when he deliberately accepts rajas guna. God Narayana himself sustains, maintains and preserves the universe as Vishnu when he accepts sattva guna and annihilates the universe at the end of maha-kalpa as Shiva or Rudra when he accepts tamas guna.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1865. A system of Hindu mythology and tradition.