Brahmanda Purana


The Brahmanda Purana is a Sanskrit text and one of the eighteen major Puranas, a genre of Hindu texts. It is listed as the eighteenth Maha-Purana in almost all the anthologies.
The text is named after one of the cosmological theories of Hinduism, namely the "cosmic egg". It is among the oldest Puranas, the earliest core of the text in written form survives from at least the 3rd century BCE, and thus the oral form is at least 600 BCE or older. The Brahmanda Purana manuscripts are encyclopedic in their coverage, covering topics such as cosmogony, Sanskara, genealogy, chapters on ethics and duties, Yoga, geography, rivers, good government, administration, diplomacy, trade, festivals, a travel guide to places such as Kashmir, Cuttack and Kanchipuram, and other topics.
The Brahmanda Purana is notable for including the Lalita Sahasranamam, and being one of the early Hindu texts found in Bali, Indonesia, also called the Javanese-Brahmanda. The text is also notable for the Adhyatma Ramayana, the most important embedded set of chapters in the text, which philosophically attempts to reconcile Bhakti in god Rama and Shaktism with Advaita Vedanta, over 65 chapters and 4,500 verses.

History

The Brahmanda Purana is one of the oldest Puranas, but estimates for the composition of its earliest core vary widely. The early 20th-century Indian scholar Dikshitar dated the Brahmanda to 4th-century BCE. Most later scholarship places this text to be from centuries later, in the 4th- to 6th-century BCE. The text is generally assumed, states Ludo Rocher, to have achieved its current structure about 1000 CE.
The text underwent continuous revisions after the 10th-century, and new sections probably replaced older ones. The 13th-century Yadava dynasty scholar Hemadri quoted large parts of the then existing Brahmanda Purana, but these parts are not found in currently surviving versions of the same text, suggesting that the 13th-century version of this Purana was different in many respects than extant manuscripts.
The Adhyatma-ramayana, the most important embedded set of chapters in the extant versions of the Purana, is considered to have been composed centuries later, possibly in the 15th-century, and is attributed to Ramananda – the Advaita scholar and the founder of the Ramanandi Sampradaya, the largest monastic group in Hinduism and in Asia in modern times. The Adhyatma-ramayana thus was added to this Purana later, and it is an important document to the Rama-related tradition within Hinduism.
A Javanese Brahmanda palm-leaf manuscript was discovered in Indonesia in the mid-19th century by colonial-era Dutch scholars, along with other Puranas. The Sanskrit originals of these are either lost or yet to be discovered. The Javanese Brahmanda was translated by the Dutch Sanskrit scholar Jan Gonda and compared to Sanskrit texts found in India.

Structure

The published manuscript of the Brahmanda Purana have three Bhaga. The first part is subdivided into two Pada, while the other two have just one Pada each. The first Bhaga has 38 Adhyaya, the second is structured into 74 chapters, while the third and last Bhaga has 44 chapters. These published text has a cumulative total of 156 chapters.
Other unpublished versions of the manuscripts exist, states Rocher, preserved in various libraries. These vary in their structure. The Nasiketopakhyana text, which is embedded inside this Purana, for example exists in 18 chapters in one version and 19 chapters in another, in a form that Moriz Winternitz termed as a "beautiful old legend" of Nachiketa found in the ancient Katha Upanishad.
The tradition and other Puranas assert that the Brahmanda Purana had 12,000 verses, but the published Venkateshwar Press version of manuscript contains 14,286 verses. The Indonesian version of Brahmanda Purana is much shorter, lacks superfluous adjectives but contains all essential information, and does not contain the prophecy-related chapters found in the published extant Indian version. This suggests that older versions of the Indian text may have been smaller, in a different style, and without prophecy-related sections, although tradition informs the opposite.

Contents

The text is encyclopedic. It is non-sectarian and reveres all gods and goddesses, including Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesha, Surya and Shakti. The text is notable for its sections denouncing all animal sacrifices. The text's philosophy is a blend of the Vedanta, Samkhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, woven in with Bhakti and some Tantra themes.
The second part, which comprises chapters 5–44 of the third section, the Uttarabhāga is the Lalitopākhyāna. It describes Goddess Lalita, verses on her worship as well a discussion of Tantra. This part is written as a dialogue between Hayagriva and sage Agastya. It is on Goddess Lalita's emergence out of fire after the king of gods Indra worshipped Devi. It includes her war with Asura Bhanda and her final triumph.
The sections of this Purana include:
The Adhyatma Ramayana, a text consisting about 4500 verses in 65 chapters and divided into seven kandas. The Nasiketopkhyana, a text in 18 chapters, the Pinakinimahatmya, a text in 12 chapters, the Virajakshetramahatmya and the Kanchimahatmya, a text in 32 chapters are embedded in this Purana.