Puranas Sentence Examples

The origin of this kingdom, famous alike in the political and religious history of India, is lost in the mists of antiquity; and though the Brahmanical Puranas give lists of its rulers extending back to remote ages before the Christian era, the first authentic dynasty is that of the Saisunaga, founded by Sisunaga (c. 600 B.C.), whose capital was at Rajagaha (Rajgir) in the hills near Gaya; and the first king of this dynasty of whom anything is known was Bimbisara (c. 528 B.C.), who by conquests and matrimonial alliances laid the foundations of the greatness of the kingdom.

Though of later date than most of the canonical Buddhist books, they are held in veneration by the orthodox, and occupy much the same position with regard to Buddhism that the Puranas do towards Brahminism.

Even greater was the support it received later on from the Puranas, a class of poetical works of a partly legendary, partly discursive and controversial character, mainly composed in the interest of special deities, of which eighteen principal (maha-purana) and as many secondary ones (upa-purana) are recognized, the oldest of which may go back to about the 4th century of our era.

Though some of the Puranas, the chief repositories of sectarian doctrines, enter largely into Sakta topics, it is only in the numerous Tantras that these are fully and systematically developed.

The Indian epics and the Puranas belong to a much later date, and are full of deities either unknown to or undeveloped in the Rig Veda and the Brahmanas.

In the South Sea Islands, generally, the fable of the union and separation of Heaven and Earth is current; other forms will be found in Gill's Myths and Songs from the South Pacific. The cosmogonic myths of the Aryans of India are peculiarly interesting, as we find in the Vedas and Brahmanas and Puranas almost every fiction familiar to savages side by side with the most abstract metaphysical speculations.

In the Puranas we find the legend of many successive creations and destructions of the world a myth of world-wide distribution.

This heralds the very beginnings of the theory of the divine incarnation, or avatara, which we find elaborated upon in the Puranas.

The very first mention of reincarnation came from the Puranas' form of Buddhism in 300 B.C.

In Hindu (the Puranas), Parsi and Arab tradition, Mer y is looked upon as the ancient Paradise, the cradle of the Aryan families of mankind, and so of the human race.