The Brahma Purana: Complete English Translation (Set of 2 Volumes)

About the Book The Brahma Purana is the first of a series of eighteen texts known collectively as the Puranas, These are counted amongst the foundational texts of Hinduism. The holy trinity of Brahma as the creator, Vishnu as the preserver and Shiva as the destroyer constitutes the central deities of this series and features in its narratives. Sometimes referred to as Adi Purana, Brahma Purana oscillates between being a work of geography with a focus on the holy sites of the River Godavari, and being an encyclopedic work of cosmology, genealogy and mythology.

Reading almost like a travel guide, it celebrates temples and sites related to Vishnu, Shiva and Devi as it focuses on places like modern-day Odisha and Rajasthan.

Brimming with insight and told with clarity, this luminous text is a celebration of a complex mythological universe populated with gods and mortals, providing readers with .111 opportunities to truly understand Indian philosophy.

About the Author Bibek Debroy is a renowned economist, scholar and translator. He has worked in universities, research institutes, and the industry and for the government. He has widely published books, papers and articles on economics. As a translator, he is best known for his magnificent rendition of the Mahabharata in ten volumes, the three-volume translation of the Valmiki Ramayana and additionally the Harivamsha, published to wide acclaim by Penguin Classics. He is also the author of Sarama and Her Children, which splices his interest in Hinduism with his love for dogs.

Introduction The word Purana means old, ancient. The Puranas are old texts, usually referred to in conjunction with Itihasa (the Ramayana and the Mahabharata).' Whether Itihasa originally meant only the Mahabharata, 'with the Ramayana being added to that expression later, is a proposition on which there has been some discussion.

But that's not relevant for our purposes. In the Chandogya Upanishad, there is an instance of the sage Narada approaching the sage Sanatkumara for instruction. Asked about what he already knows, Narada says he knows Itihasa and Purana, the Fifth Veda.' In other words, Itihasa-Purana possessed an elevated status. This by no means implies that the word Purana, as used in these two Upanishads and other texts too, is to be understood in the sense of the word being applied to a set of texts known as the Puranas today.

The Valmiki, Ramayana is believed to have been composed by Valmiki and the Mahabharata by Krishna Dvaipayana Vedavyasa.

After composing the Mahabharata, Krishna Dvaipayana Vedavyasa is believed to have composed the Puranas. The use of the word composed immediately indicates that Itihasa-Purana are 'smriti' texts, with a human origin. They are not 'shruti' texts, with a divine origin. Composition does not mean these texts were rendered into writing. Instead, there was a process of oral transmission, with inevitable noise in the transmission and distribution process.

Writing came much later.

Pargiter's book on the Puranas is still one of the best introductions to this corpus.' To explain the composition and transmission process, one can do no better than to quote him. 'The Vayu and Padma Puranas tell us how ancient genealogies, tales and ballads were preserved, namely, by the sutas.' and they describe the suta's duty ... ' The Vayu, Brahmanda and Visnu give an account on how the original Purana came into existence. Those three Puranas say: Krishna Dvaipayana divided the single Veda into four and arranged them, and so was called Vyasa. He entrusted them to his four disciples, one to each, namely Paila, Vaisampayana, Jaimini and Sumantu. Then with tales, anecdotes, songs and lore that had come down'.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages