Purāṇa-Śravaṇa-Vidhi
Purāṇa-Śravaṇa-Vidhi · purāṇa-śravaṇa-vidhi, “the rite of hearing the Purāṇas”
Purāṇa-śravaṇa means hearing the Purāṇas, the great books of sacred history, as they are recited aloud. Vidhi means the proper method. Chapter 27 of the Veṅkaṭācala Māhātmya, a section of the Skanda Purāṇa that praises the holy hill of Veṅkaṭādri (Tirumala), gives a long teaching on how the Purāṇas should be heard. It describes what happens to those who listen badly and the great puṇya (merit) of those who listen well.
The teaching comes at the end of the account of all the tīrthas (holy bathing places) on Veṅkaṭādri. It presents hearing the Purāṇa as the essential dharma of the Kali Yuga, the present age, higher even than yajña (fire offering), dāna (charity) and tapas (austerity). It also explains how the paurāṇika (the reciter) must be honoured, how the listeners must sit and behave, and what results follow from each right or wrong way of taking part.
Context
Chapter 27 opens with a question from the ṛshis: how many tīrthas are there on Veṅkaṭādri, and which are the main ones? Sūta answers that there are sixty-six koṭi (crores, or tens of millions) of tīrthas in all. Of these, 1008 are principal, and of those, six give moksha (liberation) directly. He then gives the best times for bathing in each of the six. The chapter closes with a long teaching on Purāṇa-śravaṇa as the highest path to Vishṇu in the Kali Yuga. This teaching is the practical conclusion of the whole section on the glory of the tīrthas.
Hearing the Purāṇa Is Supreme in the Kali Yuga
Sūta declares: “In the Kali Yuga there is no dharma higher than Purāṇa-śravaṇa, and no path to moksha equal to it.” He goes on: “Hearing the Purāṇa and Vishṇu-nāma-saṅkīrtana (singing the names of Vishṇu) — these two alone are the great fruits that grow on the tree called puṇya.”
The recitation of the Purāṇa is compared to a wish-fulfilling tree. Drinking amṛta (the nectar of immortality) helps only the one who drinks it, but singing the names of Vishṇu helps the whole family of the one who sings. A person who hears Vishṇu-kathā (the stories of Vishṇu) with bhakti (loving devotion) for even one muhūrta (48 minutes) is freed from every bad destiny. The merit of hearing the Purāṇa even once equals the merit of performing all yajñas and giving all kinds of dāna.
How to Honour the Paurāṇika
The paurāṇika, the one who recites the Purāṇa, must be honoured without exception:
- Whether he is young, middle-aged or old
- Whether he is poor or unlucky in worldly terms
- While the paurāṇika sits on the Vyāsa-āsana (the reciter’s seat) during the recitation, he must not bow to anyone; this rule is strict
- To the devotee, the paurāṇika’s speech is like the kāmadhenu (the wish-granting cow): it brings every desired thing
- For a being caught in saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death), there is no guru greater than the Purāṇa
- One who honours the paurāṇika with a kambala (woollen blanket), ajina (deer skin), cloth or mañca (seat) reaches svarga and finally moksha
- One who gives new cotton thread (sūtra) to the paurāṇika is born with knowledge and wealth in every birth
Where the Purāṇa Should Be Recited
Proper places are good villages, the homes of good people, good grounds, temples and riverbanks. Improper places are those where dushṭas (wicked people) gather, where śūdras or dogs are many, and where gambling goes on. The teaching lays down the setting as carefully as the content.
How the Listener Must Sit and Behave
There are strict rules for those who listen:
- Proper posture: Sit on the ground and pay attention; do not sit on a high seat and do not lie down
- Proper attitude: Listen with śraddhā (faith) and bhakti, free from other desires, clean in body, with a single-pointed mind
- Tāmbūla: Never chew tāmbūla (betel) while listening; this is likened to eating a dog’s dung, and the listener goes to naraka
- Head covering: One who listens carelessly while wearing an ushṇīsha (turban or head covering) is reborn as a heron
- Leaving midway: One who leaves in the middle of the recitation loses his wife and wealth
- High seat or vīrāsana: One who sits higher than the paurāṇika is reborn as a maddi tree (sāl tree)
- Lying down: One who lies down is reborn as a serpent
- Sitting level with the paurāṇika: One who sits at the same level incurs guru-talpa-pāpa (the pāpa of dishonouring the guru’s bed) and goes to naraka
- Not bowing to the paurāṇika: Reborn as a poisonous tree
- Insulting the paurāṇika: Reborn as a dog for one hundred births
- Arguing with or talking back to the paurāṇika: Reborn as a donkey, and then as a chameleon
- Never listening to the Purāṇa: Goes to many narakas and is reborn as a wild pig
- Disturbing the recitation: Suffers in naraka for a koṭi (ten million) years and is reborn as a village pig
The Fruits of Listening Well
For those who listen to the Purāṇa in the proper way:
- Those who listen with approval and agreement (anumodana) gain lasting mukti (liberation)
- The paurāṇika himself dwells before Brahmā for one hundred koṭi kalpas (ages of Brahmā)
- Even mahāpātakīs and upapātakīs (those guilty of great and lesser pāpa) reach the paramapada, the highest abode, through hearing the Purāṇa
- The Purāṇa is called the “great guru”; no guru equals it in freeing the jīva (the individual soul)
Link with the Tīrthas
The teaching on hearing the Purāṇa is placed on purpose at the end of the section on the tīrthas. After listing the sixty-six koṭi tīrthas and their bathing times, the text concludes that just as the tīrthas purify through the outer touch of water, the Purāṇa purifies through inner hearing. The two paths, snāna (bathing) at a tīrtha and śravaṇa (hearing) of sacred stories, work together. One cleanses the body and outer karma; the other cleanses the mind and the inner saṃskāras (deep impressions).
Per Bhavishya Purāṇa
Śrī Sūta tells the brāhmaṇas the vidhi of Purāṇa-śravaṇa which the greatly radiant Brahmā told him in an earlier time.
The fruit of hearing
By hearing Itihāsa and Purāṇa according to vidhi one is freed from all pāpas such as brahmahatyā. Brahmā, Bhagavān Vishṇu and Bhagavān Śaṅkara are satisfied with one who hears the Purāṇas, made pure, in the morning, the evening and at night. With the one who reads and hears at dawn Brahmā is pleased; in the evening Bhagavān Vishṇu; at night Bhagavān Śaṅkara.
Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Madhyama Parva, Bhāga 1, Chapters 7–8
How the listener sits
- The one who hears a Purāṇa wears white cloth and sits on a seat of black antelope skin and kuśa, neither too high nor too low.
- First he makes three pradakshiṇās of the devatā and the guru, then namaskāra to the dikpālas, then namaskāra to the devatās abiding in Oṃkāra and to the Dharmaśāstra books abiding in eternal dharma.
- The listener’s face is to the south and the reciter’s to the north. This is the vidhi told for Purāṇa and Mahābhārata kathā.
- For hearing the Harivaṃśa, Rāmāyaṇa and Dharmaśāstra the vidhi is the reverse of this.
- At the reading of Itihāsa and Purāṇa in a devālaya or tīrtha, one first tells the māhātmya of that place and that tīrtha, and then reads the Purāṇa. By hearing the māhātmya the fruit of godāna is gained.
- With the guru’s command one gives abhivādana to mother and father. They are equal to the Veda, full of all dharma and all jñāna, and by their service Brahman is attained.
Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Madhyama Parva, Bhāga 1, Chapters 7–8
The book and the reciter
One who steals Purāṇa and other books reaches naraka. One should not write out Vedas and other texts and tāntrika mantras oneself and then read them. Reciters should not give a reverse meaning of Veda mantras nor recite them incorrectly; if they do so, they should do japa of the Pāvamānī ṛcs one hundred times, for Veda mantras and their meaning are both most pure. The praṇava is pronounced at the beginning, middle and end of a Purāṇa and the like, and in the mantra.
The book, made by the devas, is honoured with gandha, flowers and the like. The thread that binds it is understood as the form of Nāgarāja Vāsuki; not honouring these is a dosha (fault), so it should never be thrown away. The leaves of the book are understood as Brahmā; the letters as Janārdana; the mātrās set on the letters as the imperishable Prakṛti; the script as Maheśa; and the mātrās of the script as Sarasvatī.
The Purāṇa-reciter gives namaskāra at the beginning, middle and end to all the maharshis counted in the Purāṇa-saṃhitās, Vyāsa, Jaimini and others, and to Bhagavān Śaṅkara, Bhagavān Vishṇu and the other devatās. Remembering them, a vipra who knows the meaning of the Dharmaśāstra reads the Purāṇa with one-pointed mind. He speaks with clear letters, in a beautiful sound, and makes plain the true meanings of all the sections.
By hearing the Purāṇa and other dharma-saṃhitās, brāhmaṇa, kshatriya, vaiśya and śūdra gain especially the fruit of the aśvamedha yajña, gain all desires, are freed from all pāpas and gain much puṇya.
The reciter who always rightly knows the meaning and intent of the whole text is alone fit to teach; that vipra alone is called Vyāsa. The town or village in which such a reciter lives is called a puṇya-kshetra, and those who live there are blessed, of fulfilled ātmā, and all their wishes are fulfilled. As a day without Sūrya, a night without Candra, a home without children and the grahas without Sūrya have no beauty, so an assembly without a Vyāsa has no beauty.
Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Madhyama Parva, Bhāga 1, Chapters 7–8
Who may be taught
The guru teaches the Purāṇa on adhyātma to a disciple who is a jñānī, dhārmika, pure, a bhakta, śānta, a Vaishṇava, free from anger and master of his senses. The disciple to be given up from afar is one who earns wealth wrongly, the fearless, the hypocrite, the hater, the purposeless, the slow-moving, one without service, one who does no yajña, the unmanly, the harsh, the angry, the miser, one given to vice, and the blamer.
Besides sons, grandsons and the like, vidyā (sacred knowledge) should also be given to a humble person. It is better to die taking vidyā along with oneself than to give it to one unfit. Vidyā says: “Do not give me to one without bhakti, to the wicked man. Give me only to the good man who is heedful, pure, a brahmacārī, of purpose, and who knows the vidhi.” If the excellent wealth of vidyā is given to a forbidden person, one of the two, giver or taker, goes in a short time to Yamapurī.
The student first bows with respect to the one who teaches adhyātmika, vaidika or alaukika vidyā, and then studies. Karma-kāṇḍa should not be studied without knowledge of Jyotisha. One who himself practises dharma and teaches dharma, he alone is the giver of knowledge, father and of the form of guru.
Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Madhyama Parva, Bhāga 1, Chapters 7–8
Sources
- Skanda Purāṇa, Vaishṇava Khaṇḍa, Veṅkaṭācala Māhātmya, Chapter 27
- Bhavishya Purāṇa, Madhyama Parva, Bhāga 1, Chapters 7–8