"Vishnu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in modern times has divided into three main denominations: the Sarawagis or Jains (who represent some sect allied to the Buddhists or followers of Gautama); the sect of Shiva, and the sect of Vishnu. ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... of Hurdwar, a far distant mission in the north of India, close to the Himalayas. The Hindoos call It the "City of a Thousand Palaces;" they say it was built by the genii on the very spot where Vishnu had reposed himself for a few weeks, after one of his mystic transmutations, in which he had conquered Siva, or Sahavedra, the spirit of evil. Though not so well known, Hurdwar is a place still more sacred ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... about town when the thermometer is at something fabulous, wearing black clothes, going to parties, and larding the lean earth. Beasts are not so foolish. To the pious Brahmin Vishnu accords the power of becoming what animal he pleases, with a break in the lease, so to speak, when circumstances alter. Had a sage this power at this moment he would become a cow, standing up to her middle in the clear, cool water of the Kennet, under the shade of a hanging willow tree. What ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... manifestation of Vishnu—the Hindoos say, to delude his enemies; the Buddhists, to bring a new revelation. Gautama was the almost deified being who spread the knowledge of Buddhism, about 500 B.C. In different countries the religion has assumed different forms, but it is nearly co-extensive ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 55); but the final composition of Manu's Samhita, such as we possess it, can hardly be referred to a period when writing was not yet used, at all events for commercial purposes. Manu's "Law-book" is older than Yagnavalkya's, in which writing has become a familiar subject. Vishnu often agrees literally with Yagnavalkya, while Narada, as showing the fullest development of the law of debt, is most likely ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... large slabs of stone. Here also there is a pagoda, which is but little inferior in size to the larger one; but it contains only large dark chambers covered with sculptures, which have reference to the worship of certain deities, particularly Vishnu. The interior ornaments are in harmony with the whole; from the nave of one of the pyramids there hang, on the tops of four buttresses, festoons of chains, in length altogether 548 feet, made of stone. Each garland, consisting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... is as yet an unsolved problem. Its monuments were mainly built between 600 and 1200 A.D., the oldest being in Orissa, at Bhuwanesevar, Kanaruk, and Puri. In northern India the temples are about equally divided between the two forms of Brahmanism—the worship of Vishnu or Vaishnavism, and that of Siva or Shaivism—and do not differ materially in style. As in the Jaina style, the vimana is their most striking feature, and this is in most cases adorned with numerous reduced copies of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Plate II., figure 1. This figure of the Lingham presents a kind of Trinity, the vase represents Vishnu, from the middle of which rises a column rounded at the top representing Siva, and the whole rests upon a pedestal typifying Brahma. From the Voyage aux Indes Orientales et à la Chine, par M. Sonnerat, depuis 1774 jusqu'en 1781. Tom. I., ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... bowl was full, he emptied it out and began filling it again, his doom consisting in measuring the sea until the judgment-day." This floating on the leaf is suggestive of ancient Indian myths, and reminds us of Brahma sitting on a lotus and floating across the sea. Vishnu, when, after Brahma's death, the waters have covered all the worlds, sits in the shape of a tiny infant on a leaf of the fig tree, and floats on the sea of milk sucking the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... skins and jars and copper vessels and flocked about this exceptional holy man. They wanted to believe him, but for years nothing had happened but the advent of the lion, whence no one exactly knew, though the holy man had not been backward in claiming it was due to his nearness to the god Vishnu. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... the sacred Phallic worship. The whole hierograph thus combines, in an extremely simple and instructive unity, the symbolisation of Apis, Osiris, Uphon, and Isis, Phallos, Pater AEther, and Mater Terra, Lingam and Yoni, Vishnu, Brama, and Sarsaswete, with their Saktes, Yang and Yiri, Padwadevi, Viltzli-pultzli, Baal, Dhanandarah, Sulivahna and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... learned in Hindu mythology to tell you his name with certainty," answered Platzoff. "I take him to be no less a personage than Vishnu. He is seated upon the folds of the snake Jesha, whose seven heads bend over him to afford him shade. In one hand he holds a spray of the sacred lotus. He is certainly hideous enough to be a very great personage. Do you know, my ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... made the name of the sweet basil sound pleasantly in the ears of many people who know nothing of botany. A species of this plant (known in Europe under the botanical name of Ocymum villosum, and in India as the Toolsee) is held sacred by the Hindus. Toolsee was a disciple of Vishnu. Desiring to be his wife she excited the jealousy of Lukshmee by whom she was transformed into the ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the ramifications of caste are more numerous and its authority more general to-day than at any former time. Many Hindu reformers, especially of the Vishnu sects, have followed in the steps of the great Buddha, by denouncing caste, root and branch, and have established their own sects during the last ten centuries on a non-caste basis. But they have all succumbed to the demon which they antagonized and now generally ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... goddesses, in the eyes of the Hindus; and many are the honors given to her in Hardwar. Besides the Mela celebrated once every twelve years, there is a month in every year when the pilgrims flock together to the Harika-Paira, stairs of Vishnu. Whosoever succeeds in throwing himself first into the river, at the appointed day, hour and moment, will not only expiate all his sins, but also have all bodily sufferings removed. This zeal to be first is so great that, owing ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... is also in many hymns a solar deity. There are also other solar deities; Mitra who is frequently invoked along with Varuna; Surya, Savitri, Vishnu, and Pushan, are all gods of this class. Each of these has some attributes or some story of his own. Surya keeps his eye on men and reports their failings to Varuna and Mitra. Savitri, the quickener, raises all things from sleep in the morning with his long ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... and platforms of the mountain are covered with elaborately sculptured shrines, temples and tombs. On the top of the hill is a small round platform containing a cavern, with a block of granite, bearing the impression of the feet of Data-Bhrigu, an incarnation of Vishnu. This is the chief place of pilgrimage for the Jains, Shrawaks and Banians. The two principal temples are situated at Deulwara, about the middle of the mountain, and five miles south-west of Guru Sikra, the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... system is thus expounded in the "Laws of Manu," i. 68-86. For its ulterior developments see Wilson, Vishnu-Purana, pp. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... discovers where the youth is buried; the smith breaks the rock asunder; the physician restores the youth to life, and he tells them how the Khan had robbed him of his wife and killed him. The mechanic then constructs a flying chariot in the form of Garuda—the bird of Vishnu; the counterpart of the Arabian rukh—which the painter decorates, and when it is finished the rich youth enters it and is swiftly borne through the air to the roof of the Khan's dwelling, where he alights. The ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... with, the Brahminism which succeeded it in modified form, as though rising from the ashes of the earlier Hindu creed which Buddhism virtually destroyed. In the higher terrace, the last addition to this stupendous sanctuary, the images of Buddha represent the ninth Avatar or Incarnation of the god Vishnu, though he still sits upon the lotus cushion and holds the sacred flower in one hand. This inclusion of Sakya Munyi within the Puranic Pantheon was a masterly feat of strategy accomplished by reviving Brahminism, the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... strength (Bhima), came out of that fort with Krishna driving the car whereon he rode. And that best of cars, incapable of being vanquished by any king, ridden in by those warriors Bhima and Arjuna, and driven by Krishna, looked exceedingly handsome. Indeed, it was upon that car that Indra and Vishnu had fought of old in the battle (with the Asuras) in which Taraka (the wife of Vrihaspati) had become the immediate cause of much slaughter. And riding upon that car Krishna now came out of the hill-fort. Possessed of the splendour of heated ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... greatly modified. Monotheism has been supplanted by a gross Polytheism, by the corruption of symbolism. At the head are the Triad Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the preserver, Siva the destroyer. Fourteen more principal deities may be enumerated. To them must be added their female Consorts. Many of the Gods are held to be incarnations of Vishnu or Siva. Further, there is a vast host of spirits and demons, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... at Benares. He was the only son of a priest of Vishnu, of rank, and was himself intended for the priesthood. At school, he meets with a boy of the name of Balty Mahu, between whom and himself a degree of rivalry, and subsequently the most decided enmity, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... the fundamental Unity, he says, finds its highest expression in the religious writings of the East, especially in the Indian Scriptures. "'The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the wise as not differing from but as the same as themselves. I neither am going nor coming; nor is my dwelling in any one place; nor art thou, thou; ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... lofty, yet which exceeds in height the Eiffel Tower in Paris; and another which does not arrest special attention, yet is taller than the Washington Monument. But the splendor of apparent architectural creations arrests the eye. "Solomon's Temple," the "Temple of Vishnu," and altars, minarets, towers, pagodas, colonnades, as if designed by architectural art, lie grouped in wonderful combinations of form ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... pretty emphatically. While you, he says to Lord Lytton, (I shall speak of this correspondence directly) 'are fighting with famine in India, I am struggling over albs and chasubles, and superstitions not more reasonable than those about Vishnu and Shiva.' 'I have been passionately labouring for the last nine days' (he says a little later in regard to the Folkestone case) 'for the liberty of the clergy to dress themselves in certain garments ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... with a single body, but with three faces, thus showing that Christian belief had in some pious minds gone through substantially the same cycle which an earlier form of belief had made ages before in India, when the Supreme Being was represented with one body but with the three faces of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Christianity, we find the Hindu trinity; Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. In the Institutes of Manu, a code of civil law as well as religious law, written about the ninth century before Christ, is found a description of creation, the nature of God, and rules for the duty of man in every station ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the scene of this tragi-comedy been laid in Hindostan instead of Corinth, and the gods here addressed been the Vishnu and Co. of the Indian Pantheon, this rant would not ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... was early believed to be expiatory; it removed sin. It was substitutionary; the victim stood in place of the offerer. All order in the universe depends upon it; it is "the nave of the world-wheel." Sometimes Vishnu is said to be the sacrifice; sometimes even the Supreme Being himself is so. Elaborated ideas and a complex ritual, which we could have expected to grow up only in the course of ages, appear from very early times. We seem ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... was notorious, and it was evident to all that he had immense faith in his gods. He was as strict in the performance of his devotions as in the payment of his debts, nor was there any altar, whether of Brahma, or of Vishnu, or of Shiva, at which he failed to offer both prayers and gifts. He observed the rules of religion and of business with admirable regularity, and enjoyed the reputation of one whose ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... text, a freedom which again reminds us of the paradoxical caprice shown by some schools of Jewish Rabbis in their treatment of the volume they professed to regard with awe. The various finite gods, such as Vishnu, Indra, Krishna, Marut, or Varuna, were not the subjects of any church creed chanted every day, and carefully stereotyped in the tender minds of children. On the contrary, various roles were assigned by successive generations to these divinities. So that, for instance, Varuna was at one time ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... say that," he denied as unresponsively as a brazen Vishnu. "I simply say that I wouldn't care to order you shot as things stand now. But you'll remember that I have only your word that all this happened or that you are really an American or even that this passport is ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Svetambaras, or clothed Jains, which latter sect seem to be Buddhists, who, besides the Tirthankars (i.e. mortals who have acquired the rank of gods by devout lives, in whom all the Jains believe), worship also the various divinities of the Vishnu system. The Jains themselves declare this system to date from a period ten thousand years before Christ, and they practically support this traditional antiquity by persistently regarding and treating the Buddhists as heretics from their system. At any event, their religion is an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Northern India about a thousand years B. C.—Is believed by whom, pray? It is also believed, and has been from time immemorial, in India, that Krishna, who figures largely in the Mahabharata, died in the year 3102 B.C.; and that he was the eighth avatar of Vishnu; and that Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, was the seventh. Now brain-mind criticism of the modern type is the most untrustworthy thing, because it is based solely on circumstantial evidence; and when you work upon that, you ought to go very warily;—it is always likely that half the circumstances ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... was a gentleman; for the Vishnu Pooran was his Chesterfield, and he had its precepts by heart. "A wise man," he would say to the pert young Kitmudgars, as they bragged and wrangled, between their hubble-bubbles, on the back stairs,—"a wise man will never address ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the arrangement of columns and colonnades, but the depredations of the followers of Mohammed in the past are everywhere to be seen. The entrance to one cave, however, is well preserved, as is also a group, almost life size, of Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma, called the Trinity. The caves are said to be the home of many deadly snakes, but none appeared, and a death-like stillness prevailed; once in the sunshine again, we met a snake charmer with a lively collection ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... not rejoice. The compositors strike their breasts, the printing-presses groan, the foremen tear their hair, their apprentices lose their heads. The most intelligent attack the proofs, and recognise Persian, others Malagash, some the symbolic characters of Vishnu. They work by chance and by ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of Vishnu the fisherman: for, but a week before, his wife Chandra had died in giving birth to a child who survived his mother but a few hours, and during those seven days all the elders and the wise women of the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... you will enter an antechamber rich in the magic of the East. In a reverent obscurity you will find Buddha on the right, Vishnu on the left, with flowers set before the one, while incense burns before the other. Somewhere in the darkness an Oriental woman will be seated on the ground, twanging on a sarabar, and now and then crooning a chant of invitation to come and share in darksome rites. You will thus be "worked ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... a scale of beings, above whom were set three great lords, Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer, collectively the Tri-murti, the Hindu trinity expressed in the mystically ineffable syllable Om. Between the trinity and man came other gods, a whole host, powers of light and powers ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... not only no fetish, it is the unspeakable thing, the Moabitish abomination. He will not bow down to the golden image which our British Nebuchadnezzar, King Demos, has made, and which he asks us to worship. And the British Nebuchadnezzar will never get beyond the worship of his Vishnu, respectability, the deity of the pure and blameless ratepayer. So Ibsen must always remain a sealed book to the vast ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... have overlooked their taking the horses out of my carriage for their own use. I am content also to believe that my fowls meekly succumb to jungle fever and cholera. But there are some things I cannot ignore. The carrying off of the great god Vishnu from the Sacred Shrine at Ducidbad by The Three for the sake of the ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... is departed! 100 Travels Waring East away? Who, of knowledge, by hearsay, Reports a man upstarted Somewhere as a god, Hordes grown European-hearted, Millions of the wild made tame On a sudden at his fame? In Vishnu-land what Avatar? Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar, With the demurest of footfalls 110 Over the Kremlin's pavement bright With serpentine and syenite, Steps, with five other Generals That simultaneously take snuff, For each ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... in every dimension. The celestial spaces are occupied by a large number of heavens, called "dewa lokas," increasing in the glory and bliss of their prerogatives. The worlds below the earth are hells, called "naraka." The description of twenty eight of these, given in the Vishnu Purana,2 makes the reader "sup full of horrors." The Buddhist "Books of Ceylon" 3 tell of twenty six heavens placed in regular order above one another in the sky, crowded with all imaginable delights. They also depict, in the abyss underneath the earth, eight great hells, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Bramah through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Avatars of old India designated as "Incarnations of Vishnu," Siva "the destroyer," ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... bound. Live free, child of the mist,—and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-maker. "That is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the cleverness ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... merchant with discerning irreverence, 'if it so please your highness, your providence is practical, and the ways of Vishnu are tedious.' ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... battle, pierced Bhimasena with nine winged arrows, each resembling the thunder-bolt in force, like the slayer of Vritra striking (the great Asura) Namuchi. And Adityaketu struck him with seventy shafts, and Vishnu with five. And Kundadhara struck him with ninety shafts, and Visalaksha with seven. And that conqueror of foes, the mighty car-warrior Aparajita, O king, struck Bhimasena of great strength with many arrows. And Panditaka also, in battle, pierced him with three ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... deadly proverbs as between the followers of Shiva and those of Vishnu, yet nobody suggests that these two do not belong to the same nation. It is said that the Vedic religion is different from Jainism, but the followers of the respective faiths are not different nations. The fact is that we have become enslaved, and, therefore, quarrel and like to ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... itself menaced by the steadily increasing influence of Buddhism, the former nature-religion, dispossessed by the Brahmins, asserted its rights in the worship of Siva in the valleys of the Himalaya Mountains, and in that of Vishnu on the banks of the Ganges. Siva is the Rudra of the Veda, the boisterous god of storms, the giver of rain and growth. Vishnu is the same divinity among other races, conceived under the influence of a softer climate in a modified form as the blue sky. Both divinities, originally belonging to different ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... adopt the Hindoo Trinity—Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—(the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer), and to so shape its creed and dogmas as to secure and maintain the power of Mother Church, simply with a change of names—"Father, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... to kick his low-caste brethren; he washes his sacred thread but does not cleanse his inner man; and so great is his avarice that a man of another caste is supposed to pray "O God, let me not be reborn as a Brahman priest, who is always begging and is never satisfied." He defrauds even the gods; Vishnu gets the barren prayers while the Brahman devours the offerings. So Pan complains in one of Lucian's dialogues that he is done out of the good things which men offer ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... probably locally, by the name of Bhaga. Again, as a herdsman's god, possibly at first also a local deity, he is P[u]shan (the meaning is almost the same with that of Savitar). As the 'mighty one' he is Vishnu, who measures heaven in three strides. In general, the conception of the sun as a physical phenomenon will be found voiced chiefly in the family-books: "The sightly form rises on the slope of the sky as the swift-going steed carries him ... seven sister steeds carry ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... like the god Vishnu, ever dying and ever returning to life, has experienced within a score of years its ten-thousandth incarnation in the persons of five or six revelators,—socialism affirms the irregularity of the present constitution of society, and, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... bright sky, that he could make him king over an anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu Dyaus, who carried his significance in his name as plainly as the Greek Helios, never attained such an exalted position; he yielded to deities of less obvious pedigree, such as Brahma and Vishnu. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... pernicious form. The honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control seemed to think that he had achieved a great victory when he had made out that his lordship's devotions had been paid, not to Vishnu, but to Siva. Sir, Vishnu is the preserving Deity of the Hindoo Mythology; Siva is the destroying Deity; and, as far as I have any preference for one of your Governor General's gods over another, I confess that my own tastes would lead me to prefer the preserving ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that Tad gazed upon. Vishnu Temple, the most wonderful piece of architecture in the Canyon, had turned to molten silver. This with Newberry Terrace, Solomon's Throne, Shinto Temple and other lesser ones stood out like some wonderful ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... beyond India's frontier and "the snows," is the ghat (a ghat is a large stone stairway descending to the river), where the good Hindu gives his dead to the flames, and the muddy inlet from the Ganges where this occurs is dedicated to Vishnu, "the sleeper on the waters," a name singularly appropriate to a place where the ashes of the dead are consigned to ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... the remarkable personality of Christ would have left more of an impress upon India than it did, and that Christianity there and in India would have been synchronous, but we must remember, that there among the idols of Bramah and Vishnu, the way was not prepared, the people unexpectant of a new prophet, unwarned of him and unheeded. There he seems to have had no close personal followers to take up the work just where he left it, and continue. ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... tradition—popular, and not Brahmanic—with which the Puranas are so deeply imbued. This has already been observed by Pictet, who lays due stress on the following passage of the Bhagavata-Purana: 'In seven days,' said Vishnu to Satyravata, 'the three worlds shall be submerged.' There is nothing like this in the Brahmana nor the Mahabharata, but in Genesis the Lord says to Noah, 'Yet seven days and I will cause it to rain upon the earth;' and a little farther we read, 'After seven days ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... with three faces on a single head. This is the "trimurti" (trinity), composed of Brahma (creator), Vishnu (conservator), and ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... river, and groups of Indians, despite the advanced season and chilly air, were performing solemnly their pious ablutions. These were fervent Brahmins, the bitterest foes of Buddhism, their deities being Vishnu, the solar god, Shiva, the divine impersonation of natural forces, and Brahma, the supreme ruler of priests and legislators. What would these divinities think of India, anglicised as it is to-day, with steamers whistling and scudding ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... Kattiawar (and how wild they are, you will understand, when I tell you that even the husbandmen plough the land, armed to the teeth), the population is fanatically devoted to the old Hindoo religion—to the ancient worship of Bramah and Vishnu. The few Mahometan families, thinly scattered about the villages in the interior, are afraid to taste meat of any kind. A Mahometan even suspected of killing that sacred animal, the cow, is, as a matter of course, put to death without mercy in these parts by the pious Hindoo ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of the ships was Magellan. It was one of his monks who had placed the cross on shore. Landing in Cebu later, he converted two thousand of the natives in a day by destroying the statue of Vishnu and putting that of the child Jesus in its place, though he still yielded to savage opinion in so far as he consented to confirm his friendship with the king by a heathen ceremony, each opening a vein in his arm and drinking the blood of the other. As usual, the appearance and ways ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished,—is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, etc., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeared ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... and wives of the cowherds of Vrindavana, among whom Krishna was brought up after his incarnation as the eighth avatar of Vishnu. Krishna's amours with the shepherdesses, or Gopia, form the subject of various celebrated mystical writings, especially the Prem-Sagar, or "Ocean of Love" (translated by Eastwick and by others); and the sensuous Gita-Govinda of the Bengalese lyric poet Jayadeva ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita are among some of the most important. Hindus may worship one or many deities, usually with prayer rituals within their own home. The most common figures of devotion are the gods Vishnu, Shiva, and a mother goddess, Devi. Most Hindus believe the soul, or atman, is eternal, and goes through a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth (samsara) determined by one's positive or negative karma, or the consequences of one's actions. The goal of religious life ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a mark, or sign, to designate the divinity worshiped, is common in non-Christian religions. One may see the Hindu returning from the temple with the mark of Vishnu or other deity freshly painted upon the forehead. Of the ancient usage, from which this Bible symbol of the "mark" is taken, Dr. John Potter says, in his "Antiquities ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... the awe and respect claimed by Mr. Herbert Spencer for a being of which the very essence is that nothing can be known of it. And, as the idea grows, the several modes and forms of the UNKNOWABLE, the Hormuzd and Ahriman of the Dualist, those personifications of good and evil; the Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, creation, preservation, and destruction; the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things; the Triad, adored by all Triadists under some modification, as that of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, father, mother, and son, type of the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... (Ch. Up. VI, 1, 4); 'for if he makes but the smallest distinction in it there is fear for him' (Taitt. Up. II, 7);— the two following Vedanta-sutras: III, 2, 11; III, 2, 3—the following passages from the Vishnu-purana: 'In which all difference vanishes, which is pure Being, which is not the object of words, which is known by the Self only—that knowledge is called Brahman' (VI, 7, 53); 'Him whose essential nature is knowledge, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Godhead. The Gnostic trinity of Manes consisted of one God and two principles, one of good and the other of evil. The Indian trinity, symbolized also by the triangle, consisted of Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, represented by Earth, Water, and Air. This symbolism of the Eternal God by the triangle is the reason why a trinitarian scheme has been so prevalent in all religions—the three sides naturally suggesting the three divisions of the Godhead. But in ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... course this surprise was fully shared by Caspar. Ossaroo participated in it, but only to a very slight degree. The shikaree was still inclined towards indulging in his superstitious belief that the creature they had seen was not of the earth, but some apparition of Brahma or Vishnu. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... or Advice of a Friend, which, as a line in its introduction informs us, was borrowed from an older book, the Panchatantra, or Five Chapters. It is a collection of apologues recited by a learned Brahman, Vishnu Sharma by name, for the edification of his pupils, the sons of an Indian Raja. They have been adapted to or translated into a number of languages, notably into Pehlvi and Persian, Syriac and Turkish, Greek and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Mountains (22,000 feet above the level of the sea) there exist spacious caves, inhabited, now for many thousand years, by these anchorites. Bhadrinath is situated in the north of Hindustan on the river Bishegunj, and is celebrated for its temple of Vishnu right in the heart of the town. Inside the temple there are hot mineral springs, visited yearly by about fifty thousand pilgrims, who come to ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... though far removed, they made me Keeper—the very highest of Buddhistic honors—would then be no longer a secret. The symbol is of vast sanctity. There is never a genuine image of Buddha without it over his heart. It is the monogram of Vishnu and Siva; but as to its meaning, I can only say every Brahman of learning views it worshipfully, knowing it the compression of the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... are a dear for bringing me such news!"—I went all lengths in my high spirits. "But fancy finding our goddess in the temple of Vishnu! How strange of George to have been able to go into the thing again in the midst of such ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... a very precious gem into his hand. Being questioned by him, she answered, with tears in her eyes and in a soft musical voice, "O excellent brahman, I am the daughter of a chief of Asuras, and my name is Kalindi; my father, the ruler of this subterranean world, was slain by Vishnu whom he had offended, and as he had no son, I was left his heir and successor, and ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... doors, the rattle of dice rivalled the jangle of bells. Young or old, none failed to consult those mysterious arbiters on this auspicious day. Houses, shops, and balconies had been swept and plastered with fresh cow dung, in honour of Vishnu's bride; and gayest among festal shop-fronts was the dazzling array of toys. For the Feast of Lights is also a feast of toys in bewildering variety; in sugar, in paper, in burnt clay; tinselled, or gorgeously painted ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... want of modesty that, for once, I sink the graceful bashfulness of the virgin, and assume the more forward deportment of the queen. When all appear to possess such merit, how can I slight all but one by my decision? Let me rather leave it to the immortal Vishnu to decide who is most worthy to reign over this our kingdom of Souffra. Let Vishnu prompt you to read your destiny; I have placed a flower in this unworthy bosom, which is shortly to call one of you its lord. Name, then, the flower, and he who first shall name it, let him be proclaimed the lawful ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... was fixt for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma, through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers, at the heart of eternal pyramids. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... and, cudgeling his brains for a device to destroy Ravana, bethought himself that while he had promised that neither gods, genii, nor demons should slay him, he had said nothing of man. He accordingly led the appealing gods to Vishnu, who proclaimed that the monster should be slain by men and monkeys, and that he would himself be re-incarnated as the eldest son of Dasaratha and in this form compass ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... throwing poignards into the air. Around the room are low divans, covered with soft and brilliant Oriental cloth. The chandelier is quite original in form, being the exact representation of the god Vishnu. From the centre of the body hangs a lotus leaf of emeralds, and from each of the four arms is suspended a lamp shaped like a Hindu pagoda, which throws out ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... century it has been grown in America. Sacred basil (O. sanctum), an oriental species, is cultivated near temples in India and its odoriferous oil extracted for religious uses. Formerly the common species was considered sacred by the Brahmins who used it especially in honor of Vishnu and in funeral rites. An African species, O. fruticosum, is highly valued at the Cape of ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... the forces inherent in nature, they imputed this work to three intelligences, which, embodying the All in All, they personified by the figure of a man with three heads, and to this trinity gave the names of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. Such a figure, carved in stone, may be seen in the island Cave of Elephanta, near Bombay, India, and is popularly believed to represent the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer; but, in determining their true signification, we must be governed by the ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... appears to be to an eclipse that happened 900 years B. C. The dualistic principle runs through the Mexican Pantheon; it consists, i. e., of male and female divinities, representing the active and passive principles in nature. We find also in this mythology a trinity, corresponding to Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—the productive, preserving, and destroying powers—in the Indian. Inferior deities represent attributes; each name denoting an attribute; hence, the gods of the Mexicans were far from being so numerous as they appear to be. The supreme divinity had about fifty names: several ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... between angels and giants for possession of the snake-god, Sarpa-deva, more commonly called Phya Naghk. The angels are seen dragging the seven-headed monster by the tail, while the giants hold fast by the heads. In the midst is Vishnu, riding on the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... hence a deformed child or an emaciated person has acquired in the Tamil districts the same epithet. The light-coloured variety of the loris in Ceylon has a spot on its forehead, somewhat resembling the namam, or mark worn by the worshippers of Vishnu; and, from this peculiarity, it is distinguished ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... non-existing and an existing-non-existing being; who is the universe and also distinct from the existing and non-existing universe; who is the creator of high and low; the ancient, exalted, inexhaustible one; who is Vishnu, beneficent and the beneficence itself, worthy of all preference, pure and immaculate; who is Hari, the ruler of the faculties, the guide of all things moveable and immoveable; I will declare the sacred thoughts of the illustrious sage Vyasa, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... role in human economy. It appears like Brahma in two aspects, Vishnu the Preserver and Siva the Destroyer. Here I have been considering nitrogen in its maleficent aspect, its use in war. We now turn to its beneficent aspect, its ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... to the Umbrella, came a feeling of veneration for it, very different from the contempt with which we are now-a-days too apt to regard it. It was represented by many ancient nations as shading their gods. In the Hindoo mythology Vishnu is said to have paid a visit to the infernal regions with his Umbrella over his head. One would think that in few places could an Umbrella have been less appropriate, but doubtless Vishnu knew what he was about, and had his own reasons for carrying his Parapluie ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... attributes of humanity. For such a doctrine Jewish mythology supplied no precedents; but the Indo-European mind was familiar with the conception of deity incarnate in human form, as in the avatars of Vishnu, or even suffering III the interests of humanity, as in the noble myth of Prometheus. The elements of Christology pre-existing in the religious conceptions of Greece, India, and Persia, are too rich and numerous to be discussed here. A very full ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... wet bull's belly wears no deeper dye; In flashing lightning's golden mantle clad, While cranes, his buglers, make the heaven glad, The cloud, a second Vishnu,[61] mounts ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... on the way to my home in the hills visited the tree. There, sure enough, plainly visible on the silvery surface in the twilight, was the name of the incarnation of Vishnu, written in Sanskrit characters, and apparently by some supernatural hand; that is to say, there was a softness in the impression, as if the finger of some supernatural being had traced the characters. I did not want any further proofs—I had had enough; and taking good ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... the "Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society," 1865-6). Some Slavonic philologists derive yaga from a root meaning to eat (in Russian yest'). This corresponds with the derivation of the word yaksha contained in the following legend: "The Vishnu Pur[a]na, i. 5, narrates that they (the Yakshas) were produced by Brahm[a] as beings emaciate with hunger, of hideous aspect, and with long beards, and that, crying out 'Let us eat,' they were denominated Yakshas (fr. jaksh, to eat)." Monier Williams's ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... from the sun's rejoicing ray, Beneath the huge abyss, the buried treasures lay. Then foamed the billowy desert wide, 200 And all that breathed—they died, Sunk in the rolling waters: such the crime And violence of earth. But he above, Great Vishnu, moved with pitying love, Preserved the pious king, whose ark sublime Floated, in safety borne: For his stupendous horn, Blazing like gold, and many a rood Extended o'er the dismal flood, The precious freight ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... group of five, sitting between the rocks and the sea, giving a touch of life to the scene, and making the picture perfect. There were two men, a woman, a child, and the priest. They were all marked with the V-shaped Vishnu mark. The priest twined the sacred Kusa grass round the fingers of his right hand, and gave each a handful of grass, and they did as he had done. Then they strewed the grass on the sand, to purify it from taint of earth, and then they began. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... to outdoor exercises, (and no one should confine himself to in-door ones,) we hold with the Thalesian school, and rank water first. Vishnu Sarma gives, in his apologues, the characteristics of the fit place for a wise man to live in, and enumerates among its necessities first "a Rajah" and then "a river." Democrats as we are, we can dispense with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... additions, is still more explicit. An evil demon having purloined the sacred books from Brahma, the whole race of men became corrupt except the seven Nishis, and in especial the holy Satyavrata, the prince of a maritime region, who, when one day bathing in a river, was visited by the god Vishnu in the shape of a fish, and thus addressed by him:—"In seven days all creatures who have offended me shall be destroyed by a deluge; but thou shalt be secured in a capacious vessel, miraculously formed. Take, therefore, all kinds of medicinal herbs, and esculent grain for food, and, together ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... tells us that one or two missionaries in India had been absurd enough, in their zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles, to urge "that the Hindus were even now almost Christians, because their Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa were no other than the Christian Trinity;" a sentence in which, he adds, we can only doubt whether folly, ignorance, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... and cruelty may change with the amusements they permit, but officialism promotes all with zeal. At present we laugh at Mesmer and study hypnotism; at present we sneer at the incarnations of Vishnu and inquire into Theosophy; at present we condemn the sacrificial "great custom" of King Prempeh and order our killings by twelve men and the sheriff and by elaborate machinery; at present we shudder at the sports of Commodus and wait breathlessly upon bulletins from ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... temple, and an idol of the god. The idol is a carved block of wood, with a frightful visage, painted black, and a distended mouth of a bloody color. He is dressed in gorgeous apparel, and his appellation is one of the numerous names of Vishnu, the preserving power of the universe, according to the theology of the Bramins. On festival days, the throne of the idol is placed upon a stupendous movable tower, about sixty feet in height, resting on wheels, which indent the ground deeply, as they turn ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... a swindle. Those above who possess happiness by privilege do not like folks below them to have so much enjoyment. If they ask you what right you have to be happy, you will not know what to answer. You have no patent, and they have. Jupiter, Allah, Vishnu, Sabaoth, it does not matter who, has given them the passport to happiness. Fear them. Do not meddle with them, lest they should meddle with you. Wretch! do you know what the man is who is happy by right? He is a terrible being. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... songs of ancient India formed themselves into a caste or priesthood; and the word "Brahma," from meaning a sacred singer, became the name of the supreme deity; in time, as the nation grew, other gods were taken into the religion. Thus we find in pre-Buddha times the trinity of gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, with their wives, Sarasvati or learning, Lakshmi or beauty, and Paravati, who was also called Kali, Durga, and Mahadevi, and was practically the goddess of evil. Of these gods Brahma's consort, Sarasvati, the goddess of speech and learning, brought to earth the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... concerning the Himalaya Mountains. The belief that in lonely valleys among the more inaccessible peaks, the Brahmin gods have their dwelling and their home; and they could not help fancying at that moment that the superstition might be true. Certainly, if it were true, some one of these deities, Vishnu, or Siva, or even Brahma himself, must dwell in that very valley that now ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother. I see his nature groping yonder so like mine. We do not live far apart. Have not the fates associated us in many ways? It says, in the Vishnu Purana: "Seven paces together is sufficient for the friendship of the virtuous, but thou and I have dwelt together." Is it of no significance that we have so long partaken of the same loaf, drank at the same ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... all the great beliefs of history, the importance of this distinction is at once evident. Jupiter, Moloch, Vishnu, Allah, and so many other divinities, were, no doubt, from the rational point of view, mere illusions, yet their effect upon the life of the peoples has ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... just as in the American myths of the coyote, and the Slavonic myths of the devil and the doves, a boar or a fish or a tortoise fishes up the world out of the waters. That boar, fish, tortoise, or what not, is Brahma or Vishnu. This savage conception of the beginnings of creation in the act of a tortoise, fish, or boar is not first found in the Puranas, as Mr. Muir points out, but is indicated in the Black Yajur Veda and in the Satapatha Brahmana.(1) In the Satapatha Brahmana, xiv. 1, 2, 11, we discover the idea, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... temple, in order to get an easy confinement. It was no disgrace to a family to have a daughter living this life. Barren women visited remote temples, under a vow of self-devotion, in order to bear children. They were victimized by the priests. At festivals of Vishnu priests tried to enlist girls in the attendant multitude. The line between the sacral usage and licentiousness was broken down at some remote resorts, but in the great temples the conduct of the women was not at all shameless, although they were trained to please. They ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... because he kneels to worship the bread in which he believes he sees the God of the universe. All the Christian denominations agree in considering as folly the incarnation of the God of the Indies, Vishnu. They contend that the only true incarnation is that of Jesus, Son of the God of the universe and of the wife of a carpenter. The theist, who calls himself a votary of natural religion, is satisfied to acknowledge a God of whom he has no conception; indulges himself in jesting upon other ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... Sage, by name Vishnu-Sarman, learned in the principles of Policy as is the angel of the planet ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... hurried tourist. He would be as likely to think of names for waves in a storm. The Eastern and Western Cloisters, Hindu Amphitheater, Cape Royal, Powell's Plateau, Grand View Point, Point Sublime, Bissell and Moran Points, the Temple of Set, Vishnu's Temple, Shiva's Temple, Twin Temples, Tower of Babel, Hance's Column—these fairly good names given by Dutton, Holmes, Moran, and others are scattered over a large stretch of ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... introduced into Buddhist temples. These often contain a hall, at the end of which are one or more sitting figures of the Buddha, on the right hand side a recumbent figure of him, but on the left a row of four statues representing Mahabrahma, Vishnu, Karttikeya and Mahasaman. Of these Vishnu generally receives marked attention, shown by the number of prayers written on slips of paper which are attached to his hand. Nor is this worship found merely as a survival in the older temples. The four figures ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... connect Krishna with a definite character but to see him in clear relation to cosmic events. The supreme Spirit was now envisaged as a single all-powerful God, known according to his functions as Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. As Brahma, he brought into existence three worlds—heaven, earth and the nether regions—and also created gods or lesser divinities, earth and nature spirits, demons, ogres and men themselves. Siva, for his part, was ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... as well as painting and the drama is considered a divine art. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva-the Eternal Trinity-were the first musicians. The Divine Dancer Shiva is scripturally represented as having worked out the infinite modes of rhythm in His cosmic dance of universal creation, preservation, and dissolution, while Brahma accentuated the time-beat ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... next year to build a nest with the same wise economy, each young robin carrying in his own swelling, bulging breast the model of the hollow circle, the cradle of other young robins. So you see it is a nest within a nest,—a whole nest of nests; like Vishnu Sarma's fables, or Scheherazade's stories, you can never find where one leaves off and another begins, they shut so one into the other. No wonder the children and philosophers are they who ask, whether the egg comes from the bird, or the bird ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... new shrine—in a hall inlaid with precious stones, under a roof supported by pillars of gold—the moon-god was set up and worshipped. Here, on the night when the shrine was completed, Vishnu the Preserver appeared to the three Brahmins ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... dead, and restored to life. Old Age and Wounding themes. Legitimate variants. Doubling of character a literary device. Title. Why Fisher King? Examination of Fish Symbolism. Fish a Life symbol. Examples. Indian—Manu, Vishnu, Buddha. Fish in Buddhism. Evidence from China. Orpheus. Babylonian evidence. Tammuz Lord of the Net. Jewish Symbolism. The Messianic Fish-meal. Adopted by Christianity. Evidence of the catacombs. Source of Borron's ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... the truth is that (the thing made of clay) is clay merely' (Ch. Up. VI, 1, 4); 'for if he makes but the smallest distinction in it there is fear for him' (Taitt. Up. II, 7);— the two following Vednta-stras: III, 2, 11; III, 2, 3—the following passages from the Vishnu-purna: 'In which all difference vanishes, which is pure Being, which is not the object of words, which is known by the Self only—that knowledge is called Brahman' (VI, 7, 53); 'Him whose essential nature is knowledge, who ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Siva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... has pointed out to me that in the Indian statues of Buddha, Vishnu, goddesses, etc., the necklace always covers the nipples, a sexually attractive adornment being thus at the same time the guardian of the orifices of the body. Crawley (The Mystic Rose, p. 135) regards mutilations as in the nature of permanent ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... While it is much more exuberant in its fiction, it nevertheless betrays a sort of apprehension lest it shall shock the less easy faith of a more incredulous reader; it is manifestly from the religious school of the follower of Vishnu, and, indeed, seems to have some reference to one of the philosophic systems. Yet the outline of the story is the same. In the Mahabharatic version, Manu, like Noah, stands alone in an age of universal depravity. His virtues, however, are of the Indian cast—the most severe and excruciating ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... eleven incarnations of Vishnu," said I, solemnly, (an oath which no Indian was ever known to break,) "I swear that so it is: so at least he told me, and I have good cause to know his power. Gujputi is an enchanter: he is leagued with devils; ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... remember seeing a squatting, life-size heathen idol hoisted from a vessel's hold and deposited on a sugar-box on a New York quay. Some ribald passer-by put a battered felt hat upon Vishnu's sacred curls, and there the poor image sat, an alien in an indifferent land, a sack across its shoulders, a "billycock" upon its head, and honoured at most with a passing stare. I thought of that lonely image as almost as lonely ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... (6000 ft.) in Rajputana, with a footprint of Vishnu on the top, and two marble temples half-way up, held sacred by ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... among the unrealities, the outcome of Maya or Illusion or Ignorance, is the idea of a supreme personal God, Parameswar, from whom, or in whom, next come the three great personal deities, namely, the Hindu Triad, Brahm[a] (not Brahma), Vishnu, and Siva,—Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer respectively. These and all the other deities are the product of Maya, and thus belong to the realm of unreality along with Parameswar.[80] Popular theology, on the other hand, begins with the three ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... have come, enchanting ladyes, To sojourn awhile, and revel In these bowers, far outshining The six heavens of Mohammed, Or the sunbright spheres of Vishnu, Or the Gardens of Adonis, Or the viewless bowers of Irim, Or the fine Mosaic mythus, Or the fair Elysian flower-land, Or the clashing halls of Odin, Or the cyclop-orbs of Brahma, Or the marble realms of Siva, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... chisels, too. In the last gallery, where, in the progress of the religion, it took on many features of Jainism, or advancing Brahmanism, Buddha is several times represented as the ninth avatar, or incarnation, of Vishnu, still seated on the lotus cushion and holding a lotus with ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... reality, the brain of this wonderful child was moulded. She was pure Hindu, full of the typical qualities of her race and blood, and, as the present volume shows us for the first time, preserving to the last her appreciation of the poetic side of her ancient religion, though faith itself in Vishnu and Siva had been cast aside with childish things and been replaced by a purer faith. Her mother fed her imagination with the old songs and legends of their people, stories which it was the last labour of her life to weave into English verse; but it would seem that the marvellous ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... by ancient philosophers that the sun when located in this Rasi or sign is called by the name of Vishnu (see the 12th Skandha of Bhagavata). This sign is intended to represent Vishnu. Vishnu literally means that which is expanded—expanded as Viswam or Universe. Properly speaking, Viswam itself is Vishnu (see Sankaracharya's commentary on Vishnusahasranamam). I have already intimated that Vishnu represents ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... represents Kalidasa as engaging in a pilgrimage to a shrine of Vishnu in Southern India, in company with two other famous writers, Bhavabhuti and Dandin. Yet another pictures Bhavabhuti as a contemporary of Kalidasa, and jealous of the less austere poet's reputation. These stories must be untrue, for it is certain that the three authors were not contemporary, yet they ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... is the Great God, and it is Bishnoo or Vishnoo because it falls from God. Vishnu is then the Great God?" "Yes; there can be no forced meaning there, can there, sir? Duvel (God) is Duvel all the world over; but correctly speaking, Vishnu is God's blood—I have heard that many times. And the snow is feathers that fall from the angels' wings. And what I said, that Bishnoo is God's Blood is old Gipsy, and known by ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... occasional glimpses of Nature only, not for any continuous reflection of her glory. Thus, Chaucer is perfumed with early spring; Homer resounds like the sea; in the Greek Anthology the sun always shines on the fisherman's cottage by the beach; we associate the Vishnu Purana with lakes and houses, Keats with nightingales in forest dim, while the long grass waving on the lonely heath is the last memorial of the fading fame of Ossian. Of course Shakspeare's omniscience included all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... throughout all the strata of society, to avoid the awful consequences of touching their lips to a vessel out of which some unworthy wretch a shade less holy has previously drunk, the fastidious worshipper of Krishna, Vishnu, or Kamadeva always drinks from his hands, unless possessed of a private drinking vessel of his own. The hands are held in position to form a trough leading to the mouth; while an assistant pours water in at one end, the recipient receives it at the other. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... God, not only in the theistic but in the pantheistic sense and regards the other deity as merely an influential angel. From time to time the impropriety of thus specially deifying one aspect of the universal spirit made itself felt and then Vishnu and Siva were adored in a composite dual form or, with the addition of Brahma, as a trinity. But this triad had not great importance and it is a mistake to compare it with the Christian trinity. Strong as was the tendency to combine and amalgamate deities, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... agriculture and the arts of life, and led them to victory over their enemies—add that he has gone away from them for awhile, and that he will some day come back again. Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha, the culture gods of Mexico and Peru, are familiar instances of this. In the later Brahminism of India, Vishnu, having already accomplished nine avatars, or incarnations, for special emergencies in the past, was yet to have one more avatar for the final destruction of the wicked and the restoration of goodness at the end of the present age; he would then be revealed in the sky seated on a white horse ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... instead of a mediator, rather a votive offering to the wounded vanity of the great Jehovah? Was not Prometheus—a light broke in upon Hyzlo. Prometheus, a myth, Buddha a myth. All myths. There were other virgin-born saviours. Krishna, Mithra, Buddha. Vishnu had not one but nine incarnations. Christianity bears alarming resemblances to Mithraism. Mithra, too, was born in a cave. The dates of Christ's birth and death may be astronomical: the winter and vernal equinoxes. But the conflict of the authorities regarding these dates is mortifying. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... a Brahmin, having been deeply imbued with the peculiar doctrines of Brahminism when in India. Amongst his friends in the East was a Brahmin of high degree in whose house were three idols, representing the Hindu Trinity—Vishnu, Brahma, and Siva. By some means which have never been explained to me, my friend managed to get possession of Siva, and brought the idol home. He placed it in a gallery which he has in his house, believing from the first that it possessed ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... come, the gallant Arjun! pious prince and warrior skilled, Arjun, born of mighty INDRA, and with VISHNU'S prowess filled." ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... portion of this curse is flagrantly mythological Among the Hindoos, Krishna also, as the incarnation of Vishnu, is represented now as treading on the bruised head of a conquered serpent, and now as entwined by it, and stung in the heel. In Egyptian pictures and sculptures, likewise, the serpent is seen pierced through the head ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... proceeded to the city of temples, the sacred city of Hinduism—Benares. She visited several temples, but found them all agreeing in their leading details. That of Vishnu has two towers connected by colonnades, the summits of which are covered with gold plates. Inside are several images of Vishnu and Siva, wreathed with flowers, and strewn over with grains of rice and wheat. Images in metal ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... was recalled to Indra's heaven, she had to act before Indra the part of the goddess of beauty, who selects Vishnu for her husband. One of the names of ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... estimated that one million pilgrims visit the sacred city of Benares every year, and it is these pilgrims that furnish the largest income which the city receives from any source. Here are the most holy shrines of Buddhism; here Vishnu and Siva have their strongholds, and here must come Hindoos from all parts of India to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges and to offer up prayers at the many holy shrines in the ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch |
