On this page
When the long night of the vanished kalpa ran out and Brahma woke from his sleep, the pure clarity of sattva rising in him, he looked out and saw every world lying empty, water reaching in every direction, nothing but water. He is Narayana himself, past the reach of thought, the lord even of Brahma and Shiva and the other lords, without beginning, the wellspring from which everything is born. Because the Purusha, the supreme Person, is the cause of the waters, the waters are called nara; and those same waters are his first ayana, his first dwelling place. From this he takes the name Narayana.
The whole world was turning to water. In his mind Brahma understood that the Earth lay sunk beneath the flood. Wanting to lift her out, he took on a second body. As in earlier kalpas he had worn the shapes of the Fish and the Tortoise and others, so at the opening of this Varaha kalpa he assumed the body of the Boar, a form made of the Vedas and of sacrifice. Ready to hold the whole world in its place, the still and changeless Lord who is the inmost self of all, who bears the Earth and rests in no support but his own, entered the waters while Sanaka and the other perfected masters of Janaloka sang his praise. Seeing him arrive in the depths of the netherworld, the goddess Vasundhara bowed low in the fullness of her devotion and began to praise him.
The Earth’s Plea
The Earth spoke. “Lotus-eyed one who carries the conch, the discus, the mace, and the lotus, I bow to you. Lift me today from these depths. In the ages before this one I too rose out of you, and you were the one who rescued me. Janardana, you are the material cause of me and of the sky and of every element there is. Supreme Self in form, I bow to you. Soul of the Person, I bow to you. Unmanifest ground and manifest shape, form of time itself, again and again I bow to you. The maker of all beings, their keeper, and the one who gathers them back at the end, all of this is you.”
“Lord, to bring the world into being and to carry it and to end it, you take on the forms of Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra, and it is you who create, sustain, and dissolve every living thing. And when the world has become one boundless ocean, Govinda, you gather all of it in and lie asleep upon the water at the last, held in the meditation of the wise. No one knows your highest essence; so the gods worship whatever form you show them in your descents. Without worshipping you, who could ever reach moksha, the final release?”
“Whatever the mind takes hold of, whatever the eye and the other senses can grasp, whatever the intellect turns over in thought, all of it is your form. I too am your form, sheltered in you, shaped out of you; this is why the world calls me Madhavi. You who are made wholly of knowledge, you who are made of solid matter, you who never wane, you without end, you the unmanifest, you the manifest, you who are the near and the far at once, soul of all that is, master of sacrifice, victory to you. Lord, you are the yajna, the fire-rite itself; you are the vashatkara, the call that sends the offering up; you are the syllable Om; you are the fires that begin with the ahavaniya flame. You are the Vedas, the limbs of the Vedas, and the Person of sacrifice, and you are the sun and the other planets, the stars, the lunar mansions, and the whole world besides. Purushottama, supreme among persons, the shaped and the shapeless, the seen and the unseen, what I have named and what I have left unnamed, all of it is you. To you, again and again, I bow.”
The Earth Raised on His Tusks
Praised in this way, the Lord who upholds the Earth let out a deep, rolling roar, grave as the chant of the Sama Veda. Then the great Boar, his eyes like lotuses in full bloom, raised the Earth upon his tusks, and with a body vast as a dark blue mountain and dark as the petal of a lotus he rose out of the deep. As he came up, the breath that surged from his mouth washed over Sanandana and the other sinless sages who dwell in Janaloka.
The water his hooves tore open went crashing back down toward the deep with a great sound, and the perfected ones settled in Janaloka were flung about by the wind of his breath and ran this way and that. His flanks still wet from the flood, the great Boar shook his Veda-formed body as he emerged, and the sages who lived among the hairs of his coat began to praise him with glad hearts, while the fearless masters of yoga in Janaloka, their gaze lifted high, bowed their heads and spoke.
“Supreme lord even of Brahma and the other lords, Keshava, wielder of the sword and the discus, victory to you. You are the cause of the world’s birth, its holding, and its end, and what men call the highest state is nothing separate from you either. Lord whose tusks are shaped like the posts of the sacrifice, you are the very Person of sacrifice. The four Vedas rest in your feet, the sacrifice in your teeth, the fire-altars in your mouth. The sacrificial fire is your tongue and the kusha grass your coat of hair. Night and day are your two eyes, and the supreme Brahman, the ground of all, is your head. Lord, the whole body of Vaishnava hymns is the tuft of hair upon your shoulder, and the entire oblation is your breath. Your snout is the offering-ladle, your deep voice the Sama chant, your body the pavilion of the one who sponsors the rite, and your joints the limbs of the sacrifice; the merit won by sacrifice and the merit won by works of charity are your ears. You whose form is eternal, be pleased with us.”
“Imperishable one, form of the whole universe, you who cover the round of the Earth with the fall of a single stride, we know you for the first cause of the world. This globe of Earth set upon your tusks looks like a mud-smeared lotus leaf caught in the teeth of a great bull elephant trampling through a lotus grove. Whatever distance lies between the Earth and the sky, all of it is filled by your body. You alone are the one true reality, and there is nothing apart from you; this entire world of moving and unmoving things is filled with your glory. Those who have not mastered their senses see only a world here, deceived by it, and the dull of mind, taking this world of pure knowledge for something solid and separate, wander lost in the ocean of delusion; those who are clear in heart and awake in understanding see this whole world as your own form made of knowledge. You who are all, soul of all, self beyond all measure, be pleased with us. May the turning of creation that comes from you work for the good of the world. Govinda, at this hour the quality of sattva is uppermost in you; so, to raise the world, lift this Earth, and, lotus-eyed one, give us peace.”
The Earth Resting on the Water
Praised in this way, the Lord in the form of the Boar swiftly raised the Earth and set her down upon the water. On that vast expanse of water she held steady like a great boat, and because of her own breadth she did not sink. Then he leveled the Earth and set the mountains in their places here and there; the peaks that had burned away at the end of the vanished kalpa, the Lord whose will always comes true built again in their proper places by his unfailing power, and he made the seven islands and the four worlds beginning with Bhuh exactly as they had been before.
After that, taking on the quality of rajas and the four-faced form of Brahma, he made the creation. In this making the Lord is only the occasion; the true cause is the power that lies within the things being made themselves. Nothing more than an occasion is needed for the making of things, for each thing arrives at its own solid form by its own power of unfolding. By this same unfailing play the Bearer of the Earth lifts her out of the water and makes her once more a home for living beings. Every time Vasundhara sinks into the flood, it is he who raises her on his tusks. This is his compassion without beginning, which shows itself again and again at the opening of every kalpa.
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)