On this page
Maharshi Maitreya turned to Parashara. “Gurudeva, you have laid out the ordering of the earth, the oceans, the sun, and the planets; you have told me of the creation of the gods and recounted the lives of Dhruva and Prahlada. Now let me hear the account of the manvantaras, of every Manu, Indra, deity, and saptarshi who presides over each kalpa.” Parashara said, “Listen. I will tell you in order all the manvantaras that have already passed and all that are still to come.”
The Manus, past and to come
From the beginning of creation until now, six Manus have already passed: Svayambhuva, Svarochisha, Uttama, Tamasa, Raivata, and Chakshusha. The age now turning is the seventh, the manvantara of Vaivasvata, the son of Surya. Every manvantara has its own Indra, its own host of gods, its own seven seers, and its own kings born of the reigning Manu. In the time of Svarochisha the Indra was Vipashchit, and the Paravatas and Tushitas were the gods; in the time of Uttama the Indra was Sushanti, and the seven sons of Vasishtha were the saptarshis; in the time of Tamasa the Indra was Shibi; in the time of Raivata, Vibhu; and in the time of Chakshusha the Indra was Manojava. Of these, four kings, Svarochisha, Uttama, Tamasa, and Raivata, are counted as descendants of Priyavrata, men who won this sovereignty over a manvantara by worshipping the lord Vishnu through their austerities. In this Vaivasvata manvantara the seven seers are Vasishtha, Kashyapa, Atri, Jamadagni, Gautama, Vishvamitra, and Bharadvaja; Purandara is the Indra; and Ikshvaku, Nriga, Dhrishta, and the rest, the nine sons of Vaivasvata Manu, became the lords of the worlds.
Seven manvantaras are still to come, and at the root of them lies a story. Surya’s wife Samjna could not endure his blazing radiance, so she set her own shadow in her place and slipped away to the forest to perform tapas. The sons that Surya fathered upon this Shadow included a Manu, and because he shared the very complexion (savarna) of his elder brother Vaivasvata, he came to be called Savarni. This Savarni will be the eighth Manu, and in his age Bali, the son of Virochana who dwells in the realm of Patala, will by the lord’s grace become Indra. After him will come the ninth, Daksha-savarni; the tenth, Brahma-savarni; the eleventh, Dharma-savarni; the twelfth, Savarni the son of Rudra; the thirteenth, Ruchi; and the fourteenth, Bhauma. Each of these Manus will have his own Indra, his own gods, and his own seven seers. In this way the fourteen manvantaras together make one thousand yugas, and that whole span is a single day of Brahma. His night is just as long, and through it the lord Janardana draws the entire three worlds into his maya and sleeps upon the couch of Shesha, until he wakes and fashions creation once more.
Vishnu’s form in every manvantara
Through all the manvantaras it is the power of the lord Vishnu, where sattva prevails, that upholds the standing order of the world, and in every manvantara he appears in a single embodied form. In the Svayambhuva manvantara he came through Akuti as the Yajna-purusha, the Person of the sacrifice; in the Svarochisha, as Ajita among the Tushita gods; in the Uttama, under the name Satya; in the Tamasa, as Hari; in the Raivata, as Sambhuti; in the Chakshusha, as Vaikuntha; and in this Vaivasvata manvantara, as Vamana, born of Aditi through Kashyapa, who with three strides of his feet conquered every world and handed this untroubled realm of the three worlds to Indra. It is this power that pervades the whole universe; the root “vish” means to enter, and for that reason he is called Vishnu. The gods, the Manus, the seven seers, the sons of the Manus, and the Indras are all expressions of his glory.
The Vyasa of every age
Just as a Manu appears at the dawn of every Satyayuga to set the bounds of dharma, so in every Dvapara the lord Vishnu takes the form of Vedavyasa and divides the Veda. Seeing the strength, the vigor, and the brilliance of human beings decline, he splits the one Veda into many parts for their good. In this Vaivasvata manvantara it has already happened twenty-eight times; that is, twenty-eight Vyasas have passed. In the first Dvapara Brahma himself apportioned the Veda; after him, in order, came Prajapati, Shukracharya, Brihaspati, Surya, Mrityu, Indra, Vasishtha, Sarasvata, Tridhama, and others still. In this same succession the twenty-third was Trinabindu of the line of Somashushma; then Riksha of the line of Bhrigu, who became known as Valmiki; after him Shakti, the father of Parashara, served as Vyasa; then Parashara himself; then Jatukarna; and the twenty-eighth was his son Krishna-Dvaipayana, who is to be understood as Narayana himself made manifest, for who else could be the author of the Mahabharata? In the Dvapara to come, Ashvatthama, the son of Drona, will be Vedavyasa.
The dividing of the Veda
In the old time the Veda was a single body of knowledge, a hundred thousand mantras strong, formed of four feet. Krishna-Dvaipayana Vyasa, moved by Brahma’s prompting, made four divisions of it and gave each to a disciple: the Rigveda to Paila, the Yajurveda to Vaishampayana, the Samaveda to Jaimini, and the Atharvaveda to Sumantu; and for the itihasa and the Puranas he took on Romaharshana of the Suta caste. These disciples and their own students then made hundreds of branches within each, until a whole forest seemed to spring up from the single tree of the Veda. One episode clings to the Yajurveda. Yajnavalkya, a disciple of Vaishampayana, once refused to obey his teacher, and the teacher, stung, told him, “Give back everything you have learned from me.” Yajnavalkya brought up the Yajus he had studied, stained now with blood, and walked away. The other disciples took the shape of tittira partridges and picked those branches clean, and for that reason they came to be called Taittiriya. Yajnavalkya then worshipped Surya and won new branches of the Yajus, which grew famous under the name Vaji.
The eighteen Puranas and the fourteen sciences
The Samaveda passed on from Jaimini to his son and grandsons, who divided it further until its branches ran into the thousands; the Atharvaveda too spread through many divisions, from Sumantu down to Kabandha, Devadarsha, and Pathya, and among these five kalpas were held the finest: the Nakshatra-kalpa, the Veda-kalpa, the Samhita-kalpa, the Angirasa-kalpa, and the Shanti-kalpa. After this Vyasa composed a Purana-samhita, complete with narrative, subsidiary tale, verse, and the settling of rites, and taught it to his disciple Romaharshana; Romaharshana’s six disciples gave it wider reach still. From the essence of these very samhitas Parashara shaped this Vishnu-purana-samhita.
The Puranas number eighteen, and the oldest among them is the Brahma-purana. They are the Brahma, the Padma, the Vaishnava, the Shaiva, the Bhagavata, the Naradiya, the Markandeya, the Agneya, the Bhavishya, the Brahmavaivarta, the Lainga, the Varaha, the Skanda, the Vamana, the Kaurma, the Matsya, the Garuda, and the Brahmanda. Beyond these there are many upapuranas, the secondary Puranas, as well. All of them set out the making of the world, its dissolution, the lives of the gods, and the histories of the various royal houses; and the one that Parashara was reciting, the Vaishnava mahapurana spoken after the Padma, is the great Purana in which the creation, the re-creation, the lineages, and the manvantaras, everything from first to last, speak of Vishnu alone.
Hear, last of all, the count of the sciences. The six Vedangas, the four Vedas, Mimamsa, Nyaya, the Puranas, and Dharmashastra make fourteen fields of knowledge; add to them Ayurveda, Dhanurveda, Gandharvaveda, and Arthashastra, and the number rises to eighteen. The sages themselves fall into three kinds: the brahmarshi, the devarshi, and the rajarshi. The shruti that issued from Prajapati Brahma is eternal; all these divisions into branches are only its variations. In this way Parashara laid open for Maitreya the whole secret of the manvantaras, of the Vyasas of age upon age, and of the parceling out of the branches of the Veda.
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)