12 Facts About Vishnu Purana

1.

Vishnu Purana is one of the eighteen Mahapuranas, a genre of ancient and medieval texts of Hinduism.

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2.

Manuscripts of Vishnu Purana have survived into the modern era in many versions.

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3.

Composition date of Vishnu Purana is unknown and contested, with estimates widely disagreeing.

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4.

Dimmitt and van Buitenen state that each of the Puranas including the Vishnu Purana is encyclopedic in style, and it is difficult to ascertain when, where, why and by whom these were written:.

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5.

Vishnu Purana is an exception in that it presents its contents in Vishnu worship-related Pancalaksana format – Sarga, Pratisarga, Vamsa, Manvantara, and Vamsanucaritam .

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6.

Hindu god Vishnu is presented as the central element of this text's cosmology, unlike some other Puranas where Shiva or Brahma or goddess Shakti are offered prominence.

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7.

The reverence and the worship of Vishnu Purana is described in 22 chapters of the first part as the means for liberation, along with the profuse use of the synonymous names of Vishnu Purana such as Hari, Janardana, Madhava, Achyuta, Hrishikesha and others.

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8.

Vishnu Purana asserts that the Brahmin should study the Shastras, worship gods and perform libations on behalf of others, the Kshatriya should maintain arms and protect the earth, the Vaishya should engage in commerce and farming, while the Shudra should subsist by profits of trade, service other varnas and through mechanical labor.

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9.

Krishna story in the Vishnu Purana is similar to his legend in the Bhagavata Purana, in several other Puranas and the Harivamsa of the Mahabharata.

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10.

Vishnu Purana is one of the 18 major Puranas, and these text share many legends, likely influenced each other.

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11.

Rajendra Hazra, in 1940, assumed that Vishnu Purana is ancient and proposed that texts such as Apasthamba Dharmasutra borrowed text from it.

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12.

The theistic Vedanta scholar Ramanuja, according to Sucharita Adluri, incorporated ideas from the Vishnu Purana to identify the Brahman concept in the Upanishads with Vishnu, thus providing a Vedic foundation to the Srivaishnava tradition.

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