{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/vp/vp055.htm","path":"hin/vp/vp055.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp055.htm","text":"The Vishnu Purana, translated by Horace Hayman Wilson, [1840]\nVish\u0144u appears to Prahl\u00e1da. Hira\u0144yaka\u015bipu relents, and is reconciled to his son: he is put to death by Vish\u0144u as the Nrisinha. Prahl\u00e1da becomes king of the Daityas: his posterity: fruit of hearing his story.\nTHUS meditating upon Vish\u0144u, as identical with his own spirit, Prahl\u00e1da became as one with him, and finally regarded himself as the divinity: he forgot entirely his own individuality, and was conscious of nothing else than his being the inexhaustible, eternal, supreme soul; and in consequence of the efficacy of this conviction of identity, the imperishable Vish\u0144u, whose essence is wisdom, became present in his heart, which was wholly purified from sin. As soon as, through the force of his contemplation, Prahl\u00e1da had become one with Vish\u0144u, the bonds with which he was bound burst instantly asunder; the ocean was violently uplifted; and the monsters of the deep were alarmed; earth with all her forests and mountains trembled; and the prince, putting aside the rocks which the demons had piled Upon him, came forth from out the main. When he beheld the outer world again, and contemplated earth and heaven, he remembered who he was, and recognised himself to be Prahl\u00e1da; and again he hymned Purushottama, who is without beginning or end; his mind being steadily and undeviatingly addressed to the object of his prayers, and his speech, thoughts, and acts being firmly under control. \"Om! glory to the end of all: to thee, lord, who art subtile and substantial; mutable and immutable; perceptible and imperceptible; divisible and indivisible; indefinable and definable; the subject of attributes, and void of attributes; abiding in qualities, though they abide not in thee; morphous and amorphous; minute and vast; visible and invisible; hideousness and beauty; ignorance and wisdom; cause and effect; existence and non-existence; comprehending all that is good and evil; essence of perishable and imperishable elements; asylum of undeveloped rudiments. Oh thou who art both one and many, V\u00e1sudeva, first cause of all; glory be unto thee. Oh thou who art large and small, manifest and hidden; who art all beings, and art not\nall beings; and from whom, although distinct from universal cause, the universe proceeds: to thee, Purushottama, be all glory.\"\nWhilst with mind intent on Vish\u0144u, he thus pronounced his praises, the divinity, clad in yellow robes, suddenly appeared before him. Startled at the sight, with hesitating speech Prahl\u00e1da pronounced repeated salutations to Vish\u0144u, and said, \"Oh thou who removest all worldly grief, Ke\u015bava, be propitious unto me; again sanctify me, Achyuta, by thy sight.\" The deity replied, \"I am pleased with the faithful attachment thou hast shown to me: demand from me, Prahl\u00e1da, whatever thou desirest.\" Prahl\u00e1da replied, \"In all the thousand births through which I may be doomed to pass, may my faith in thee, Achyuta, never know decay; may passion, as fixed as that which the worldly-minded feel for sensual pleasures, ever animate my heart, always devoted unto thee.\" Bhagav\u00e1n answered, \"Thou hast already devotion unto me, and ever shalt have it: now choose some boon, whatever is in thy wish.\" Prahl\u00e1da then said, \"I have been hated, for that I assiduously proclaimed thy praise: do thou, oh lord, pardon in my father this sin that he Bath committed. Weapons have been hurled against me; I have been thrown into the flames; I have been bitten by venomous snakes; and poison has been mixed with my food; I have been bound and cast into the sea; and heavy rocks have been heaped upon me: but all this, and whatever ill beside has been wrought against me; whatever wickedness has been done to me, because I put my faith in thee; all, through thy mercy, has been suffered by me unharmed: and do thou therefore free my father from this iniquity.\" To this application Vish\u0144u replied, \"All this shall be unto thee, through my favour: but I give thee another boon: demand it, son of the Asura.\" Prahl\u00e1da answered and said, \"All my desires, oh lord, have been fulfilled by the boon that thou hast granted, that my faith in thee shall never know decay. Wealth, virtue, love, are as nothing; for even liberation is in his reach whose faith is firm in thee, root of the universal world.\" Vish\u0144u said, \"Since thy heart is filled immovably with trust in me, thou shalt, through my blessing, attain freedom from existence.\" Thus saying, Vish\u0144u vanished from his sight; and Prahl\u00e1da repaired to his father, and bowed down before him. His father\nkissed him on the forehead 1, and embraced him, and shed tears, and said, \"Dost thou live, my son?\" And the great Asura repented of his former cruelty, and treated him with kindness: and Prahl\u00e1da, fulfilling his duties like any other youth, continued diligent in the service of his preceptor and his father. After his father had been put to death by Vish\u0144u in the form of the man-lion 2, Prahl\u00e1da became the sovereign of the Daityas; and possessing the splendours of royalty consequent upon his piety, exercised extensive sway, and was blessed with a numerous progeny. At the expiration of an authority which was the reward of his meritorious acts, he was freed from the consequences of moral merit or demerit, and obtained, through meditation on the deity, final exemption from existence.\nSuch, Maitreya, was the Daitya Prahl\u00e1da, the wise and faithful worshipper of Vish\u0144u, of whom you wished to hear; and such was his miraculous power. Whoever listens to the history of Prahl\u00e1da is immediately cleansed from his sins: the iniquities that he commits, by night or by day, shall be expiated by once hearing, or once reading, the history of Prahl\u00e1da. The perusal of this history on the day of full moon, of new moon, or on the eighth or twelfth day of the lunation 3,\nshall yield fruit equal to the donation of a cow 4. As Vish\u0144u protected Prahl\u00e1da in all the calamities to which he was exposed, so shall the deity protect him who listens constantly to the tale 5.\n145:1 Literally, 'having smelt his forehead.' I have elsewhere had occasion to observe this practice: Hindu Theatre, II. 45.\n145:2 Here is another instance of that brief reference to popular and prior legends, which is frequent in this Pur\u00e1\u0144a. The man-lion Avat\u00e1ra is referred to in several of the Pur\u00e1\u0144as, but I have met with the story in detail only in the Bh\u00e1gavata. It is there said that Hira\u0144yaka\u015bipu asks his son, why, if Vish\u0144u is every where, he is not visible in a pillar in the hall, where they are assembled. He then rises, and strikes the column with his fist; on which Vish\u0144u, in a form which is neither wholly a lion nor a man, issues from it, and a conflict ensues, which ends in Hira\u0144yaka\u015bipu's being torn to pieces. Even this account, therefore, is not in all particulars the same as the popular version of the story.\n145:3 The days of full and new moon are sacred with all sects of Hindus: the eighth and twelfth days of the lunar half month were considered holy by the Vaish\u0144avas, as appears from the text. The eighth maintains its character in a great degree from the eighth of Bh\u00e1dra being the birthday of Krish\u0144a; but the eleventh, in more recent Vaish\u0144ava works, as the Brahma Vaivartta P., has taken the place of the twelfth, and is even more sacred than the eighth.\n146:4 Or any solemn gift; that of a cow is held particularly sacred; but it implies accompaniments of a more costly character, ornaments and gold.\n146:5 The legend of Prahl\u00e1da is inserted in detail in the Bh\u00e1gavata and N\u00e1rad\u00edya Pur\u00e1\u0144as, and in the Uttara Kha\u0144d\u0301a of the Padma: it is adverted to more briefly in the V\u00e1yu, Linga, K\u00farma, &c., in the Moksha Dharma of the Mah\u00e1bh\u00e1rata, and in the Hari Van\u015ba.","title":"The Vishnu Purana: Book I: Chapter XX","type":"page"}