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The Bhagavata-purāṇa
[CH.
prominent and direct interpretations) that the creation through gunas is false and that yet, on account of the all-pervading reality that underlies it, it appears as real; that the production, maintenance and destruction of the universe all proceed from the ultimate reality, Brahman, and that it is through the light of this reality that all darkness vanishes1. In another passage, in VI. 4. 29-32, it is said that Brahman is beyond the gunas, and that whatever may be produced in the world, or as the world, has Brahman for its ground and cause, and that He alone is true; and that both the atheistic Samkhya and the theistic Yoga agree in admitting Him as the ultimate reality.
It was pointed out in a previous section that according to Jiva the māyā had two parts, formative and constitutive, and it was the latter that was identified with prakṛti or the three gunas. But this māyā was regarded as an external power of God as distinguished from His essential power. The Viṣṇu-purāna, however, does not seem to make any such distinction; it says that the great Lord manifests Himself through His playful activity as prakṛti, puruşa, the manifold world and time, but yet it considers the prakṛti and the puruşa to be different from the essential nature of the Lord, and time as that which holds these two together and impels them for the creational forms 2. Thus, since time is the cause which connects the prakṛti and the purușa, it exists even when all creational modes have shrunk back into the prakṛti in the great dissolution. When the gunas are in equilibrium, the prakṛti and the puruşa remain disconnected, and it is then that the element of time proceeds out of the Lord and connects the two together3. But the prakṛti in both its unmanifested and manifested forms or its contraction and dilation (samkoca-vikāsābhyām) is a part of God's nature; so in disturbing the equilibrium of prakṛti it is God who disturbs His
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1
janmadyasya yato'nvayad itaratas cārtheṣv abhijñaḥ svarāṭ tene brahma hṛdā ya adikavaye muhyanti yat surayaḥ. tejo-vāri-mṛdām yathā vinimayo yatra trisargo'mṛṣā dhāmnā svena sadā nirasta-kuhakam satyam param dhimahi. Bhāgavata, I. I. I.
2 vyaktam vişnus tathāvyaktam puruṣaḥ kāla eva ca.
kriḍato balakasyeva ceṣṭām tasya niśāmaya.
vişnoḥ svarupāt parato hi te'nye rupe pradhānam puruşaś ca viprās tasyaiva te'nyena dhrte viyukte rūpādi yat tad dvija kāla-samjñam. Visnu-purana, 1. 2. 18, 24.
guṇa-samye tatas tasmin prthak pumsi vyavasthite kāla-svarupa-rupam tad vişnor maitreya vartate.
Ibid. 27.
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