by Bibek Debroy
1448 Ganga.
1449 The gods.
1450 The brahmanas addressed Prithu in this way.
1451 Prithu.
1452 These were the Kumaras, Sanatkumara and the others, sons born through Brahma’s mental powers. Since Shiva was born later from Brahma, they were Shiva’s elder brothers.
1453 Therefore, you already know the answer and need not have asked.
1454 Happiness and unhappiness and so on.
1455 The wood from which it has been kindled.
1456 Such as a mirror.
1457 He is born as a vegetable or a tree.
1458 A superior or an inferior birth.
1459 Time.
1460 Kama (desire), krodha (anger), lobha (avarice), moha (delusion), mada (arrogance) and matsarya (jealousy). Alternatively, the five senses and the mind.
1461 He got his kingdom and his own body because of the sages. Therefore, these are like leftovers and leftovers must not be given to a guest.
1462 Prithu.
1463 Meru.
1464 Yama.
1465 Shiva.
1466 The god of love, Kama.
1467 Brahma.
1468 Agriculture, habitations, etc.
1469 Four fires in four directions and the sun overhead.
1470 The five senses and the mind.
1471 This is subject to interpretation. He was not interested in the siddhis that yoga brings. He was no longer interested in yoga or knowledge.
1472 The jivatman with the paramatman.
1473 The chakras in the body are muladhara (base of the spine), svadhishthana (at the root of the sexual organs), manipura (navel), anahata (heart), vishuddha (throat), ajna (between the brows) and sahasrara (crown of the head). Though the text doesn’t mention each of these chakras, that is what is meant.
1474 Antardhana was Vijitashva’s name.
1475 At the time of Prithu’s horse sacrifice.
1476 Barhi is sacrificial grass like kusha. In a sacrifice, the blade of the kusha grass must point towards the east. Barhishad means someone who seats himself on barhi grass. Since the grass pointed towards the east (prachi), Barhishad was also known as Prachinabarhi.
1477 Brahma.
1478 Agni had fallen in love with the wives of the saptarshis. To dissuade him, Svaha, Agni’s wife, assumed the form of a female parrot (shuki) so as to seduce him.
1479 Vishnu.
1480 Gandharvas and kinnaras.
1481 Barhishad’s name.
1482 This shloka is interpreted in many different ways.
1483 Every shloka in this invocation has layers of interpretation.
1484 The three Vedas.
1485 The doer, the instrument and the action.
1486 Rudra.
1487 A touchstone is used to test for gold. Shri, in the form of the shrivatsa mark, is always on the chest.
1488 There is an implicit image of the Ganga flowing through the feet.
1489 Those who follow karma yoga or jnana yoga.
1490 Those born from wombs, those born from eggs, those born from sweat and trees and herbs.
1491 And not perceive it directly.
1492 Brahma.
1493 This is an allegory. Puranjana means someone who lives inside a city, the body being compared to a city. Avijnata is the atman.
1494 The nine gates of the body are two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, the mouth, the anus and the genital organs.
1495 Parks.
1496 That is, they were non-violent.
1497 Continuing with the allegory, the woman is intelligence (buddhi) and the ten servants are the ten senses. Each sense has several inclinations (the wives).
1498 The five hoods are prana, apana, vyana, samana and udana.
1499 The text uses the word shyama. The word shyama usually means dark. Shyama has a secondary meaning of a woman who has not borne children. That meaning seems more appropriate here.
1500 Modesty personified, Parvati and Sarasvati respectively.
1501 Lakshmi.
1502 The one born from the mind, Kama, the god of love.
1503 The two eyes, the two nostrils, the two ears and the mouth were above. The genital organs and the anus were below.
1504 When one faced the east, the two eyes, the two nostrils and the mouth faced the east. The right ear was to the south and the left ear was to the north. The genital organs and the anus were to the west.
1505 The two eyes.
1506 The two nostrils.
1507 The mouth.
1508 The right ear hears rituals that are for the path of the ancestors (pitris).
1509 The left ear hears rituals that are for the path of the gods (devas).
1510 Named after the asuras.
1511 Where one indulges in gramya (sensual and sexual) pursuits.
1512 Literally, without speech and without form.
1513 The chariot is his body, the five horses are the five senses, the two shafts are notions of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, the two wheels are good deeds and bad deeds, the axle is innate nature, the three bamboo poles are the three gunas, the five joints between the yoke and the pole are the five aspects of the breath of life, the rein is the mind, the charioteer is intelligence, the seat is the heart, the two poles for the yoke are grief and delusion, the five types of equipment are the five objects of the senses, the seven bumpers are the seven sheaths of the body, the five kinds of movement are the five organs of action, the bow is attachment, the inexhaustible quiver represents infinite desire and the eleven commanders are the ten senses and the mind.
1514 Gavaya.
1515 Brahmanas.
1516 Mura’s enemy, Krishna.
1517 Tilaka is a mark made on the forehead.
1518 They were wet with tears.
1519 The arrows of the god of love are made out of flowers.
1520 Puranjana’s wife.
1521 He forgot about his own atman.
1522 Puranjana.
1523 Old age.
1524 The gandharvas stand for days. The gandharva women stand for nights, the fair ones from shukla paksha and the dark ones from krishna paksha.
1525 Puranjana.
1526 The daughter of Kala (Time) is meant to signify old age.
1527 The unfortunate one.
1528 Puru’s father was Yayati. Though Yayati had turned old, his desires had not been extinguished. He asked his sons to take over his old age and temporarily grant him their youth, until his desires were satisfied. The son who agreed to do this was Puru.
1529 Of brahmacharya. Hence, Narada refused.
1530 Bhaya means fear.
1531 Durbhaga is telling Bhaya this.
1532 A kind of fever.
1533 Physical and mental ailments.
1534 The serpent.
1535 Avijnata.
1536 At the time of his death, he had been thinking of Puranjani.
1537 In the king of Vidarbha’s house. Alternatively, Rajasimha can be taken as an adjective, meaning a lion among kings.
1538 Out of the seven kulachalas, this is likely to have been Malaya.
1539 Of Puranjana.
1540 Six families for the five senses and the mind.
1541 As a metaphor for pure consciousness.
1542 The being chooses his own body.
1543 Rasavit is the same as Rasajna.
1544 The queen’s, that is, Buddhi’s.
1545 Rasa (plasma), rakta (blood), mamsa (flesh), meda (fat), asthi (bones), majja (nerve or marrow) and shukra (semen, reproductive tissue).
1546 The organs of action.
1547 Adding the mind to the five sense of perception and the five of action.
1548 The wicked pursuit of the five objects of the senses.
1549 The two types of fever are those that result from high temperatures and those that result from low temperatures.
1550 Respectively associated with sattva, tamas and rajas.
1551 Like heaven.
1552 Sufferings rel
ated to adhidaivika (destiny), adhibhoutika (nature) and adhyatmika (one’s own nature).
1553 Brahma.
1554 Therefore, since it has no direct manifestation, how is it carried forward to the next life?
1555 Senses of perception and senses of action.
1556 The dark one is Rahu. Rahu can only be seen at the time of an eclipse, on the lunar (or solar) disc.
1557 Including the mind.
1558 The five flows of prana, the mind and the ten senses.
1559 The linga sharira.
1560 This is interpreted as the way a caterpillar moves, clinging to a new blade before it lets go off the old blade. Though not impossible, it would be far-fetched to interpret this as metamorphosis into a butterfly.
1561 Koustubha.
1562 Sudarshana chakra, club, lotus, bow, arrow, sword, shield, conch shell. The conch shell and the lotus are weapons by extension.
1563 Both dawn and dusk.
1564 Kandu was a sage and Pramlocha was an apsara. After delivering her daughter, Pramlocha returned to heaven.
1565 Moksha.
1566 As in the small measure of time.
1567 The fire of universal destruction.
1568 This means Daksha, who had shown disrespect to Shiva. Earlier, Daksha had been born through Brahma’s mental powers. But he was now born as Marisha’s biological son.
1569 Daksha means skilled and accomplished.
1570 Brahma.
1571 The Prachetas.
1572 Daksha.
1573 A sage.
1574 Associated with the three Vedas.
1575 During the summer, the sun sucks up water into the clouds. During the monsoon, this is showered down as rain.
Acknowledgements
The corpus of the Puranas is immense, in scope, as well as in length. Taken together, the eighteen Puranas are four times the size of the Mahabharata. If the prospect of translating the Mahabharata seemed challenging, the task of translating the Puranas was/is downright disconcerting and intimidating. After the Mahabharata, the Harivamsha and the Valmiki Ramayana, it was a natural transition, the obvious thing to do. However, it seemed to be an impossible task. Did one dare to start? If so, where? Since there was no ‘Critical Edition’ of the Puranas, what text should one use? I have now come to believe what should be obvious. Everything one does is determined by destiny. One is merely an instrument, implementing someone else’s will. Thus, destiny intervened. It first intervened in the form of my dear friend, Professor Ramesh Kumar Pandey, vice chancellor, Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha. He suggested, in the absence of Critical Editions, one should use the Nirnaya Sagar texts. They have much greater acceptance than other versions. In addition, urging me along the road, he gifted me the Nirnaya Sagar texts of eleven of the eighteen Mahapuranas.
That still left a question unanswered. Which Purana should one start with? Destiny intervened yet again, in the form of another friend, Shri Yudhistir Govinda Das of ISKCON. For some time, Yudhistir had been urging us to visit Mayapur. That visit, pending for quite some time, materialized so that it synchronized with the annual Gaura Purnima festival. What better time to visit Mayapur? Yudhistir also gifted us a set of Prabhupada’s translation of the Bhagavata Purana. This determined the answer to the question. The Bhagavata Purana it would have to be. One does indeed deplore the general ignorance about the treasure trove the Puranas are. The dumbed down versions one usually sees or reads are pale shadows of what these texts actually contain. Having said this, the Purana that most people are familiar with is probably the Bhagavata Purana. Therefore, the Bhagavata Purana was a good choice. As a token of appreciation, these three volumes are dedicated to Yudhistir Govinda Das. As Yudhistir well knows, this is nothing more than a token. Dedications are meant for the one who is beyond either of us.
All these translations, ever since the Bhagavad Gita in 2006, have been published by Penguin India. I am indebted to Penguin for believing in the utility of not just the Bhagavata Purana translation, but the entire Purana Project, which still seems to stretch into the interminable horizon of the future. But one step at a time. For the record, with the Bhagavata Purana published, I am now translating Markandeya Purana, the next one in the series. In particular, Meru Gokhale and Ambar Sahil Chatterjee at Penguin India have been exceptionally patient, persevering and encouraging. But for them, the Purana Project might not have taken off. Paloma Dutta has been the editor since the days of the Mahabharata translation. That makes life a whole lot easier. She knows my style and I know hers. There is a Paloma hand in the product, even though it won’t be detected and isn’t meant to be.
(10.60.15) Ever since this translation journey started in 2006, my wife, Suparna Banerjee (Debroy) has been a constant source of support, ensuring the conducive and propitious environment required for the work to continue unimpeded. She has been much more than that. (She was with me in Mayapur too.) In a rich language like Sanskrit, I can think of close to twenty words—all capturing the different nuances of ‘wife’. Suparna has been all these and more. This too is destiny.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 2018
Copyright © Bibek Debroy 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Meena Rajasekaran
ISBN 978-0-143-42801-5
This digital edition published in 2018.
e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05378-9
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