Tradition
Bhagavata Purana
Overview
The Bhagavata Purana (Sanskrit: भागवतपुराण; IAST: Bhāgavata Purāṇa), also known as the Srimad Bhagavatam (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam), Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana (Śrīmad Bhāgavata Mahāpurāṇa) or simply Bhagavata (Bhāgavata), is one of Hinduism's eighteen major popular Puranas (Mahapuranas) and central text in Vaishnavism. Composed in Sanskrit and traditionally attributed to Veda Vyasa, it promotes bhakti (devotion) towards Krishna. Like other Puranas, it discusses a wide range of topics including cosmology, astronomy, genealogy, geography, legend, music, dance, yoga and culture.
The text consists of twelve books (skandhas or cantos) totalling 335 chapters (adhyayas) and 18,000 verses. The tenth book, with about 4,000 verses, has been the most popular and widely studied. It is widely available in almost all Indian languages and was the first Purana to be translated into a European language, as a French translation of a Tamil version appeared in 1788 and introduced many Europeans to Hinduism and 18th-century Hindu culture during the colonial era.
The Bhagavata Purana has Vaishnava theology that is grounded in the philosophical traditions of Vedanta and Samkhya, utilizing these systems in the service of bhakti. It has been interpreted as having a non-dualistic tenor, but also integrating themes from the Advaita (monism) philosophy of Adi Shankara with the Vishishtadvaita (qualified monism) of Ramanujacharya and the Dvaita (dualism) of Madhvacharya. The dualistic school of Madhvacharya has commentaries expounding the dualistic interpretation of the Bhagavata, beginning with the Bhagavata Tatparya Nirnaya.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The fires from within and from without meet about the smooth and bright surface of the mirror; and because they meet in a manner contrary to the usual mode, the right and left sides of the object are transposed. In a concave mirror the top and bottom are inverted, but this is no transposition.
Plato, Timaeus
States what Bhagavata Purana is.
Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Bhagavata Purana is.
Wherefore it happens that those other unhappy ones who gaze thereon, and think over their own defects from the desire for perfection, fall into the weariness of sighs; and this is meant where it says: "That from the eyes she touches heralds fly Heartward with longings, heavenward with a sigh."
Dante Alighieri, The Banquet
States what Bhagavata Purana is.
Philosophers who discussed Bhagavata Purana
Related ideas
- Parvati
- Lakshmi
- Avatar
- Ātman (Hinduism)
- Tirthankara
- Honorific
- Dvaita Vedanta
- Gaudiya Vaishnavism
- Vishishtadvaita
- Ramanuja
- Madhvacharya
- Brahma Sutras
- Faith
- Abhinavagupta
- Hedonism
- Hinduism
- India
- Samadhi
- Atheism
- Vedas
- Jainism
- Bhagavata Sampradaya
- Bhagavan
- International Society for Krishna Consciousness
Place in the tradition
Part of Cosmology.