The Vedas in the Vāmana Purāṇa

Veda, “the sacred knowledge”

The Vāmana Purāṇa, which Pulastya Maharshi tells to Nārada Maharshi, honours the Vedas in its stotras and its accounts. It praises Bhagavān Vishṇu as the source, the knower and the goal of the Vedas; it tells of Brahmā, master of the Vedas and the Vedāṅgas, whose sabhā resounds with the Sāma; it tells of the kings and of Bhagavān Vāmana himself who studied the Vedas from their gurus; and it names the Vedas as the best of the āgamas and the pramāṇa (authority) at the root of dharma, which enjoins yajña. These passages are gathered here, with their chapters.

The Vedas and Bhagavān Vishṇu

The Vāmana Purāṇa praises Bhagavān Vishṇu as the source, the knower and the goal of the Vedas. In the stotra that Bhagavān Śiva sang to him at Kurujāṅgala, when Bhagavān Vishṇu gave him darśana holding the śaṅkha, the cakra and the gadā, Bhagavān Śiva said: “The four Vedas with their six aṅgas are you; you are the one who knows them; the supreme tattva (truth) to be known through them is you; the Upavedas are you; you are all things. Salutations to you.”

In the Vishṇu Sārasvata Stotra, which Sarasvatī spoke from the tongue of a brahmacārī, the fourteenth verse says: “I take refuge in the Veda-purusha, from whose mouth, in the form of Brahmā, the four Vedas came forth.” In the Sarva-pāpa-mocana stava, made known by Bhagavān Śiva as Tripurāntaka, Bhagavān Vishṇu is hailed as Gadādhara, “he who rescued the Vedas”, who holds the cakra and Lakshmī, and as Sāmaveda-rūpa, whose form is the Sāmaveda. When Skanda set out against Mahisha, Bhagavān Vishṇu recited a svastivācana (blessing for well-being) over him, and in it he called on Prabhu Vārāha to protect him in the waters of the ocean, Narasiṃha Deva in places of danger, and Mādhava, whose form is the Sāmaveda.

Kaśyapa, in the stotra he sang to Śrī Purushottama at the place called Amṛta, called him Vedavedya, “the one known through the Vedas”, Mahāśaya, and dear to brāhmaṇas. Yet when the devas, defeated by Bali, came with Kaśyapa to Brahmaloka, Brahmā told them: “Neither I, nor you, nor the Vedas know who that Purushottama is or what he is like. But that mahātmā knows us, the Vedas and the universe well.”

After Bhagavān Vāmana had taken the three worlds in three steps, Bāṇa, son of Bali, pleaded with him: “Did you not yourself say in the śrutis that a gift made knowing the place, the time and the recipient becomes akshaya (imperishable)? You first created the Vedas. You fill everything in the universe, which shines with sat and asat (being and non-being).”

Source: Vāmana Purāṇa, Chapters 3, 32, 59–60, 65; Vāmana Purāṇa, Saro Māhātmya, Chapters 4–5

The Vedas and Brahmā

Long ago, in the pralaya, the whole universe became one ocean. The Supreme slept in it for a thousand years, and at the end of that night took a rājasa form and created the worlds. From that creation arose the one in whom rajas predominates: five-faced, master of the Vedas and the Vedāṅgas, the creator of the moving and the unmoving. This is Brahmā.

Brahmā’s sabhā in Brahmaloka resounds with the vast singing of the Sāma. When the devas came there with Kaśyapa, they heard the chief Bahvṛcas, the reciters of the Ṛgveda, chanting its mantras in the order of krama, pāda and akshara, each in keeping with the kratu (yajña) to which it belongs. In other places they heard the discourses of dvijas expert in śikshā (the science of pronunciation), with praise of yajña, of those who knew the meaning of the Veda, of those learned in all the vidyās, and of those skilled even in worldly vidyās. Among those who serve Brahmā there, the four Vedas with their aṅgas and upāṅgas take bodily form and worship him, together with the prajāpatis Daksha, Marīci, Bhṛgu, Atri, Vasishṭha and the others, the vidyās, the elements and many more.

The Vedas are also the bond with which Brahmā held back a flood. Kuṭilā, the second daughter of Menā, was brought to Brahmā by the devas; when he said that she could not bear Śiva‘s vīrya, she spurned his words and vowed to win that power by tapas, and Brahmā pronounced a śāpa that she would become water that very instant. Turned into water, she was about to flood Brahmaloka, and the Pitāmaha bound her firmly with the Ṛg, Yajus, Sāma and Atharvaṇa Vedas. She remained there, wetting the circle of Brahmā’s jaṭās (matted locks).

Source: Vāmana Purāṇa, Chapters 2, 25; Vāmana Purāṇa, Saro Māhātmya, Chapter 3

The study of the Vedas

The Vāmana Purāṇa tells of kings and of Bhagavān Vāmana himself learning the Vedas from their gurus.

• Saṃvaraṇa, son of Ṛksha, studied the Vedas with all their aṅgas and upāṅgas from his purohita Vasishṭha, the son of Varuṇa. It was on an anadhyayana day, a day on which the Veda is not studied, that he went out to hunt.
• Kuru, son of Saṃvaraṇa and Tapatī, received the saṃskāras from Vasishṭha; his upanayana was done at nine years, and he gained mastery in the Vedas and the śāstras. By ten years he had gained all knowledge and became famous by the name Kuru.
• Bhagavān Vāmana. After his upanayana, Bhagavān Vāmana, Bhūtabhāvana (who brings beings into being), studied the Vedas with their aṅgas while the maharshis praised him with stotras. From Bharadvāja the Āṅgirasa he learned the Sāmaveda, full of great sound and with its great ākhyānas (narratives), together with the gāndharva (the art of music). Pulastya Maharshi tells Nārada that Bhagavān Vāmana, an ocean of the Vedas and śāstras, gained mastery of the śruti within one month, only to set going the custom of the world by his own conduct.
• Ṛtadhvaja, who came to the kshetra of Śrīkaṇṭha Deva on the southern bank of the Yamunā, was a great tapasvī, a Sāmavedī (a follower of the Sāmaveda) and a Pāśupata-ācārya.

When Bhagavān Vishṇu was born as Vāmana and the devas and ṛshis gave him the gifts of a brahmacārī, the praṇava Oṃkāra, all the Vedas adorned with their svaras, the śāstras, and the vidyās of Sāṅkhya and Yoga took refuge in Bhagavān Vāmana.

Source: Vāmana Purāṇa, Chapters 22–23, 37, 62; Vāmana Purāṇa, Saro Māhātmya, Chapter 9

The Vedas, yajña and dharma

In their teaching to the rākshasa Sukeśī, the ṛshis named the best of every kind: as Janārdana is the best among all devatās, Himavān among mountains and Gaṅgā among rivers, so the Vedas are the best among the āgamas.

The Vedas are the root of dharma. When King Vena, a reviler of the Vedas, proclaimed that no one in his kingdom might give dāna or perform yajñas, the ṛshis went to him and spoke for his good: “Rājā! The Vedas are the pramāṇa that is the root of dharma. They enjoin the work of yajña. If yajñas are not performed, the devatās are not pleased and do not send the rains the crops need. In this way this whole creation and the devatās depend on yajñas.” Vena would not listen, and the munis struck him down with kuśa grass charged with mantras. Later, when Vena’s son brought him to the Sthāṇu tīrtha, Vāyu warned that there is no nishkṛti (atonement) for the pāpa called Vedanindā, the reviling of the Veda.

The Vedas also set the order of the yajña. At Bali‘s great yajña, Śukrācārya told Bali: “The Vedas have forbidden the asuras to be enjoyers of the yajña-bhāga (the portions of the yajña). By the authority of the śruti, the devatās are worthy of the yajña portions, and they have been set aside in this yajña of yours. Seeing that, against the Veda, the devatās are not given their portions, and that the havis is given to the daityas instead, Śrī Hari is coming.” Though the brāhmaṇas offered well with Ṛk and Sāma mantras, the yajña fires, in fear of Bhagavān Vishṇu who was coming, did not accept the havis. When Bhagavān Vāmana came near Bali’s yajñaśālā, he spoke with a voice deep as a cloud: “In this yajña all the Vedas, preceded by the Oṃkāra, are present in the form of tapodhanas (those whose wealth is tapas).”

The Vedas give the way of worship too. When the devas could not see Bhagavān Śiva on Mount Mandara, Śrī Hari told them to perform abhisheka to him with milk, curd, ghee, pañcagavya, honey and pure water, and then to chant the japa of the Śatarudrīya mantra to Hara in the pada-krama arrangement told in the Ṛgveda.

In the Venastava, the stotra that Vena sang to Bhagavān Śiva at the Sthāṇu tīrtha, he says: “You are made of the Ṛg, Yajus and Sāma Vedas. The Vedas and Upanishads always praise you alone.” He hails Bhagavān Śiva as the beginning and end of the Vedas, the Gāyatrī and the praṇava Oṃkāra, as the Śatarudrīya in the Yajurveda, and as the one who sets going the four yugas, the four Vedas and the four hotras.

Source: Vāmana Purāṇa, Chapters 12, 36, 64–65; Vāmana Purāṇa, Saro Māhātmya, Chapter 26

Sources

• Vāmana Purāṇa, Chapters 2–3, 12, 22–23, 25, 32, 36–37, 59–60, 62, 64–65
• Vāmana Purāṇa, Saro Māhātmya, Chapters 3–5, 9, 26