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Parashara continued. “Now hear, Maitreya, the lineage of Kashyapa’s other wives. From Samhrada came the sons Ayushman, Shibi, and Bashkala, and from Virochana, the son of Prahlada, was born King Bali. Bali had a hundred sons, and of them Banasura was the eldest and the mightiest. Hiranyaksha too fathered many powerful sons, among them Utkura, Shakuni, Bhutasantapana, Mahanabha, and Kalanabha. From Danu, Kashyapa’s second wife, came a line of famed danavas: Dvimurdha, Shambara, Ayomukha, Shankushira, Ekachakra, Taraka, Vrishaparva, the strong Puloma, and the supremely valiant Viprachitti. Two daughters of Vaishvanara, Puloma and Kalaka, were given in marriage to this same Kashyapa, and from them sprang sixty thousand foremost danavas, the ones called the Paulomas and the Kalakeyas. Through the womb of Simhika, Viprachitti gained sons more fearsome still: Vatapi, Namuchi, Ilvala, Naraka, Andhaka, and Vaktra. And within Prahlada’s own line, born of a fierce and unbending austerity, came the daitya named Nivatakavacha.”
“From the six daughters of Tamra, another of Kashyapa’s wives, came the owls, the hawks, the vultures, the crows, and the birds of the water, while from Sugrivi were born the horses, the camels, and the donkeys. Vinata’s two sons, Garuda and Aruna, grew renowned, and Garuda, devourer of serpents, was terrible beyond measure. From Surasa came serpents by the thousand, and from Kadru the mighty nagas Shesha, Vasuki, Takshaka, Karkotaka, and Dhananjaya, every one of whom lived under Garuda’s dominion. From Krodhavasha came the fanged and predatory beasts, from Krodha the pishachas, from Surabhi the cows and the buffaloes, from Ira the trees, the creepers, and the grasses, from Khasa the yakshas and the rakshasas, from Muni the apsaras, and from Arishta the gandharvas. Every one of these, the fixed and the moving alike, is a child of Kashyapa, and this is what is called the creation of the Svarochisha Manvantara.”
Diti’s Hundred-Year Vow
“At the dawn of the Vaivasvata Manvantara a great Varuna yajna was performed, and Brahma himself served as its hota. From that same age comes a tale. Diti’s sons Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu had already been slain, and Diti, weighed down with grief, won the favor of her husband Kashyapa and asked of him a boon: a son with the strength to kill Indra. Kashyapa granted that terrible request. ‘If you can carry this child, lady, for a hundred full years, holding your mind fixed in meditation upon the Lord, in perfect purity and self-restraint, then your son will be the one to slay Indra.’ With those words he placed the child within her, and she began to carry it with the strictest guard over her purity.”
“Indra, learning what would bring about his own death, took up the service of Diti with a careful, elaborate humility, and all the while he watched for the smallest lapse in her discipline. Only a little of the hundred years remained when, one day, Diti lay down upon her bed without having washed her feet, and sleep closed over her. This was the opening Indra had been waiting for. With the vajra in his hand he slipped into her womb and cut the great child into seven pieces. Torn by the thunderbolt’s pain, it began to wail aloud. Again and again Indra told it, ‘Do not weep, ma rodih,’ yet when, divided into seven, it still would not die, Indra in his fury cut each of the seven pieces into seven more. These became the forty-nine Maruts, gods of tremendous swiftness. Because Indra had said ma rodih, they were called the Maruts, and in time these forty-nine Marudgana became the attendant gods of Indra.”
Brahma’s Apportioning in Prithu’s Reign
“Now hear, Maitreya, the glory of Lord Vishnu. In an earlier age, when the great sages anointed Prithu to the throne of kings, Brahma, the grandsire of the worlds, apportioned every realm in its proper order. He made Chandra the lord of the constellations, the planets, the brahmanas, and all that grows from the soil, and of yajna and tapas as well. He gave Kubera lordship over kings, Varuna over the waters, Vishnu over the Adityas, and Agni over the Vasus. He set Daksha over the prajapatis, Indra over the Marudgana, and Prahlada over the daityas and the danavas. He made Yama, the lord of dharma, king of the ancestors, and Airavata the lord of all the great elephants. Garuda he set over the birds, Indra over the gods, Ucchaihshravas over the horses, and the bull over the cattle. The lion he made king of the forest beasts, Sheshanaga lord of the serpents, Himalaya lord of everything that stands unmoving, Kapila lord of the sages, and the tiger king of every clawed and fanged creature.”
“Having divided the realms in this way, Brahma set guardians over all the quarters of the sky. In the east he anointed Sudhanva, son of the prajapati Vairaja; in the south, Shankhapada, son of the prajapati Kardama; in the west, the steadfast and never-wavering Ketuman; and in the north, Hiranyaroma, the all but unconquerable son of the prajapati Parjanya. To this day these four, each within his own portion, uphold with dharma the whole of this earth, filled as it is with its seven islands and its countless cities.”
All of It a Portion of Vishnu
“O best of sages, these kings and every other who has ever labored to sustain the world are all forms of the glory of Vishnu, the Supreme Soul. Whoever ruled over living beings in ages past and whoever will rule in the ages to come, every lord of gods, of daityas, of danavas, of beasts and birds and men, of serpents, trees, mountains, and planets, all of them have sprung from a portion of Vishnu, who lives within every being. The power to sustain belongs to no one apart from Shri Hari. Taking his stand upon the gunas of rajas and sattva and the rest, that eternal Lord fashions the world at its creation, upholds it through its long duration, and, wearing the form of Kala, gathers it back at the end.”
“That Janardana accomplishes all of this through four portions at every turn. In the creation, one portion becomes the unmanifest Brahma, the second the prajapatis beginning with Marichi, the third Kala, and the fourth all living beings. In the world’s maintenance, one portion is Vishnu upholding it himself, the second becomes the line of Manu and the rest, the third is Kala, and the fourth abides within every creature. And in the dissolution, one portion takes the form of Rudra, the second the forms of Agni and Yama and their kind, the third the form of Kala, and the fourth becomes the whole of created being. In this way Brahma, the prajapatis led by Daksha, Kala, and every living thing are the glories of Shri Hari, the very causes by which the world arises, endures, and passes away. His own supreme abode lies beyond them all, vast and free of every attribute.”
When Maitreya asked about it, Parashara opened that supreme abode too into four distinctions. For the yogi who longs for liberation, the knowledge of the means, of pranayama and the practices that go with it, is the first. The knowledge of Brahman as the goal to be reached is the second. The non-dual knowledge that the two are of one nature is the third. And beyond all three lies the fourth and final, known only in direct experience, free of all activity, past every word, serene, pure, and above all states of mind, the very nature of the self, that Brahman who bears the name of Vishnu. The yogis who dissolve into this last distinction, even as they go on acting in the world, become seedless, and no fruit of merit or of sin fastens itself to their deeds. That Brahman has two forms, the embodied and the unembodied, the perishable and the imperishable. As the light of a single fire spreads out on every side, so this whole world is the power of that Supreme Brahman; and as the heat of a fire grows or fades with nearness and with distance, so through that power there runs a gradation, from Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva down through the gods, the prajapatis, men, beasts, and trees.
Vishnu’s Ornaments and Weapons
At the last, Maitreya asked how the Lord bears this world in the form of his ornaments and his weapons. Parashara answered, “I tell it to you just as Vasishtha once told it to me. The stainless, spotless soul of this world, the pure knower of the field, Shri Hari bears as the Kaustubha gem. Prakriti, the primal nature, he wears upon his chest as the Shrivatsa. The intellect he carries as his mace. The tamasic ahankara (the sense of self) that is the cause of the elements, and the rajasic ahankara that is the cause of the senses, he holds as the conch and the Sharnga bow. And the restless mind, that sattvic form of ahankara, he holds as the chakra in his hand, the disc that outruns even the wind. The Vaijayanti garland of five gems is the gathering of the five tanmatras and the five elements; the organs of knowledge and of action are his arrows; and the knowing that vidya brings, concealed within the scabbard of avidya, is his bright and unblemished sword.”
“So it is that purusha and pradhana, the intellect and ahankara, the five elements, the mind, the senses, and both knowledge and ignorance find their shelter in Shri Hrishikesha. Formless though he is, he takes up all of these as weapons and ornaments through his form of maya, for the good of every living thing. He is Kala as well, in the shapes of the kala, the kashtha, the nimesha, the day, the season, and the year; the seven worlds, from Bhurloka up to Satyaloka, are also he. The Rik, the Yajus, the Sama, and the Atharva, the histories, the Puranas, the codes of dharma, and every poem and every melody, all that is made of sound, is the body of that Supreme Soul whose very form is the word. And in this world or anywhere else, every object that has form and every one that has none, all of them are his body. In the one whose mind holds fast to the truth that I and this whole world are Shri Janardana himself, the sickness of attraction and aversion finds no further hold. And so, Maitreya, I have now told you the first book of this Purana; the person who listens to it with faith is set free from every sin.”
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)