He, from whom Creation, Sustenance and Dissolution of the Universe take place, Who is both the instrumental and material cause of it; Who is omniscient; Who is the only one having self-mastery, being the One independent entity; Who illumined the mind of Brahma with the Vedic revelation whose wisdom is the wonder of even the greatest sages; in Whom the worlds, the manifestation of the three Gunas, subsist in reality without in the least affecting Him, just as the combination of material elements like fire, water, and earth subsist in their causes without changing their elemental nature; in Whose light of consciousness there is no place for anything false, --- on that Truth Supreme we meditate.
This Invocation is no simple formality of literary composition of a highly religious mind. It presents a profound philosophy that explains Existence. No other philosophy does so in such a vast range and depth. Therefore the Invocation merits closer examination. It talks of all Existence originating in one, single source described as Sat-Cit-Ananda, or Truth-ConsciousnessBliss. The Manifestation of something from an Unmanifest state is basically an Action. Any conscious Action can originate only from a Consciousness. Creation of a vast Existence is an Effect springing from that Action, which makes it the First Cause which originates from a vast Consciousness. Action has also to be impelled by a power that also originates from the same Consciousness. That power has the capacity to create, preserve and dissolve that Existence, That power is Prakrti. It has three specializations which introduce a vast variety and multiplicity of form, faculty and function in the created Existence, These specializations bear the names Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. The One Consciouness first creates three likenesses of Itself and invests them with these specializations of power, to respectively create, preserve and dissolve Existence. It also provides them with Space and Time in which to administer these functions in respect of all living and non-living forms.
The originating Consciousness is MahaVishnu and His three emanations are Brahma who creates, Vishnu who preserves and Siva who finally dissolves all Existence. The dissolution is at the time of the Great Deluge, the Pralaya, when MahaVishnu withdrawa all Existence into Himself and resumes once again His Original Single Unmanifest Form of His Eternal Existence. The three emanations from the One Originating Consciousness may be regarded as the first step from the Nirguna to the Saguna, the Unmanifest to the Manifest state. This first step is dramatically portrayed in the Devi Bhagavata. The onward steps of Creation are then protrayed with the same dramatic effect in the Bhagavata Purana, which therefore can, in a sense, be regarded as a sequel to the Devi Bhagavata. This chronology may not be actual, but can be considered logical. Mixed chronologies may indeed characterise much of the textual corpus of the ancient Indian tradition, but this may be due to the vast time scales involved, relying on orally transmitted ancient memories. The ancients certainly knew how to go back and forth to fit their fact collections and thought formulations into vast but appropriate time sequences. It is interesting too to see how this vast Divine process on the Cosmic scale is mimicked in the lifetime of a single human endowed with a speck of that large Consciousness. Here too we see how consciousness makes the human aware of how, under the influence of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, he creates, preserves and destroys objects, both internally in his Mind and externally in the physical world around him. Mercifully too, he has his share of what is called the Nitya Pralaya, when the human goes to sleep, a brief period of sleep when every day’s experiences are dissolved and he enjoys a a daily dose of a human version of Sat-Cit-Ananda. This is analogous to the Naimittika Pralaya when Brahma goes to sleep, and the Cosmic existence is dissolved for the duration of his long night. The ultimate analogue is the Maha Pralaya also called the Prakrta when, at the end of Brahma’s lifetime of a hundred divine years, the entirety of all Existence along with Prakrti and Time merge back into the ultimate Unmanifest Form of MahaVishnu. Luckily the human is able to see from his own hard experiences or from the teachings of the wise, that within him is a small particle of that Eternal Consciousness that lives beyond the creation, preservation and dissolution of his own transient physical existence. When this realization comes to a human, it is by what is called the Saving Grace of the Lord.
We now come to the Puranas, which are but a great elaboration of the above theme. The earliest Vedic reference to them is in the Atharva Veda (XI-7-24) while the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad says that together with the Veda, the Purana sprang from the breath of the Paramatman. The word Purana occurs there as a noun in the singular number. This suggested that it was originally, along with the Vedas, a single body of text, and perhaps, formed part of all Vedic learning. There was a tradition of narration of the Purana stories on the occasion of important Vedic sacrifices, the recitals being referred to as Pariplava Akhyanas. It would be therefore useful to pause at this point to look at what the Bhagavata itself says on the origin of the Vedas and Puranas, as narrated by Suta Ugrasravas in the following verses from the first Skanda.
