Great Indian Religion

Author(s): G T Bettany
Publisher: Ward Lock Bowden and Co

Page 79

DESCRIPTION OF THE SUPREME BEING. 67 traditions, some of which descend from Vedic times ; and others are traceable to the two great The Vishnu epics. “It includes a complete cosmogony or Purana. account of primary creation, accounts of the destruction and renovation of worlds, genealogies of gods and patriarchs, the reigns of the Manus, the institutes of society, including caste and burial rites, and the history of the princes of the solar and lunar races, a life of Krishna, and an account of the end of the world. It is not necessary to dwell upon its contents, which would require a volume. Pantheism is woven into the general scheme, God and Nature being identified, and Vishnu, as supreme God, being incarnated in Krishna.
The style of the Vishnu Purana on its philosophical side may be gathered from the following extracts, relating to the supreme deity, as translated by H. H. Description of Wilson : * Who can describe him who is not the supreme to be apprehended by the senses, who is the Being. best of all things, and the supreme soul, self-existent; who is devoid of all the distinguishing characteristics of complexion, caste, or the like, and is exempt from birth, vicissitude, death, or decay; who is always, and alone; who exists everywhere, and in whom all things here exist; and who is thence named Vasudeva (the resplendent one in whom all things dwell)? He is Brahma, supreme lord, eternal, unborn, imperishable, undecaying; of one essence; ever pure as free from defects. He, that Brahma, was all things, comprehending in his own nature the indiscrete (spirit) and the discrete (matter), He then existed in the forms of Purusha and Kala. Purusha (spirit) is the first form of the supreme. Next proceeded two other forms—the discrete and the indiscrete; and Kala (time) was the last. These four the wise consider to be the pure and supreme condition of Vishnu. These four forms, in their due proportions, are the causes of the production of the phenomena of creation, preservation, and destruction. Vishnu being thus discrete and indiscrete substance-spirit and timesports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening to his frolics." Here it should be noted that the creation