{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/vp/vp026.htm","path":"hin/vp/vp026.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp026.htm","text":"The Vishnu Purana, translated by Horace Hayman Wilson, [1840]\nBook Two\nThe second book opens with a continuation of the kings of the first Manwantara; amongst whom, Bharata is said to have given a name to India, called after him Bh\u00e1rata-varsha. This leads to a detail of the geographical system of the Pur\u00e1\u0144as, with mount Meru, the seven circular continents, and their surrounding oceans, to the limits of the world; all of which are mythological fictions, in which there is little reason to imagine that any topographical truths are concealed. With regard to Bh\u00e1rata, or India, the case is different: the mountains and rivers which are named are readily verifiable, and the cities and nations that are particularized may also in many instances be proved to have had a real existence. The list is not a very long one in the Vish\u0144u Pur\u00e1\u0144a, and is probably abridged from some more ample detail like that which the Mah\u00e1bh\u00e1rata affords, and which, in the hope of supplying information' with respect to a subject yet imperfectly investigated, the ancient political condition of India, I have inserted and elucidated.\nThe description which this book also contains of the planetary and other spheres is equally mythological, although occasionally presenting practical details and notions in which there is an approach to accuracy. The concluding legend of Bharata--in his former life the king so named, but now a Brahman, who acquires true wisdom, and thereby attains liberation--is palpably an invention of the compiler, and is peculiar to this Pur\u00e1\u0144a.","title":"The Vishnu Purana: Preface: Book Two","type":"page"}