"Vishnu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 highest summit. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 than Benares; people assemble there once a year from all parts, and consecrate ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... But soon, in a number of impure varieties of these three religions, and yet more in the lower forms of paganism, the place of this dualism is taken by a philosophical pluralism, and over against the good and world-sustaining deity (Osiris, Ormuzd, Vishnu), there is placed a wicked and destroying god (Typhon, Ahriman, Siva). Numerous demi-gods or saints, good and bad, sons and daughters of the gods, are associated with these two chief deities, and take part with them in the administration and ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... which, as successor of Kashiapa, 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
... 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 majority of the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Ceylon 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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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 sustained, till on the crest 210 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... regarded as a semi-divine being temporarily lowered to participation in certain 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 ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... conscious again of life, I looked up. They were still down there by the well, those two, but while I looked the old priest, bent and white, came out of the little temple where he had been sprinkling his image of Vishnu, and dropped his aged limbs from one step to the other painfully, steadying his uncertain descent with a stick. He went to the beautiful couple seated on the edge of the well, built of mud and sun-dried bricks, and he seemed to speak to Isaacs, I watched, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... 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, of marvellous deeds and worshipped here by all. Some ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the poets for very casual and 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 natural phenomena; but the rest, great or small, associate themselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... 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 suffered ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... rather less embarrassment than a brazen Vishnu would have exhibited under the same circumstances. "He showed me what pitchers they was in your studio. I'll luk 'em over again fer ye one of these days. Some of 'em ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... 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, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... fashioned for itself beautiful images of benevolent beings who refuse the bliss of Nirvana that they may alleviate the sufferings of others.[15] So far as we can judge, the figures of these Bodhisattvas took shape just about the same time that the personalities of Vishnu and Siva were acquiring consistency. The impulse in both cases is the same, namely the desire to express in a form accessible to human prayer and sympathetic to human emotion the forces which rule the universe. But in this work of portraiture the Buddhists ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... So be it! Kuru Prince! I will to thee unfold Some portions of My Majesty, whose powers are manifold! I am the Spirit seated deep in every creature's heart; From Me they come; by Me they live; at My word they depart! Vishnu of the Adityas I am, those Lords of Light; Maritchi of the Maruts, the Kings of Storm and Blight; By day I gleam, the golden Sun of burning cloudless Noon; By Night, amid the asterisms I glide, the dappled Moon! Of Vedas I am Sama-Ved, of gods in Indra's Heaven Vasava; of the faculties ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... feminine tiger," the Major secretly decided, as he began a brilliant sketch of the social life of the strange land of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. "I presume, of course, that you do not care to appear with a fifty-pound Marshall & Snell grove outfit, as if you were the wife of an Ensign in a marching regiment. I will give you the real life our women lead out there. You ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... observances connected with it are said to be the "first religious rites." Sacrifice 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 compelled to draw the inference that sacrifice formed an essential and ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... wishing to accommodate their religion to the people,—who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever been inclined to sensuous worship,—multiplied their sacrifices and sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. Gradually piety was divorced from morality. Siva and Vishnu became worshipped, as well as Brahma and a host of other gods unknown ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... idol. The Brahmin who spoke bad Hindoostanee disputed with great heat, and his tongue ran faster than I could follow, and the people, about one hundred, shouted applause. I continued my questions and among other things asked if what I had heard of Vishnu and Brahma was true, which he confessed. I forbore to press him with the consequences, which he seemed to feel; and then I told him what was my belief. The man grew quite mild and said it was chula bat (good ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... 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 ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... paces for a hut to dwell in. Baly smiled, and bade him measure out what he required. The first pace of the dwarf compassed the whole earth, the second the whole heavens, and the third the infernal regions. Baly at once perceived that the dwarf was Vishnu, and adored the present deity. Vishnu made the king "Governor of Padalon" or hell, and permitted him once a year to revisit the earth, on the first full moon ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that 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. The dwellers of India ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... books of the Hindoos. The 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 to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... 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 be ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... 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. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... gold; and the child was Perseus, who slew the Gorgons (the powers of darkness) and saved Andromeda (the human soul (1)). Devaki, the radiant Virgin of the Hindu mythology, became the wife of the god Vishnu and bore Krishna, the beloved hero and prototype of Christ. With regard to Buddha St. Jerome says (2) "It is handed down among the Gymnosophists, of India that Buddha, the founder of their system, was brought forth by a Virgin from her ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... his own view 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 and stand in particular attitudes. All my powers of mind and body were devoted to these important ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... scene 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 ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... at, by monkeys, by parroquets, 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 worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama 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 sphynxes, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... 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
... is stated 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 ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Had 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 ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... practically 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 ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... are the lingal emblems of 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
... 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; nor are others, others; nor am I, I.' As if he had said, 'All is for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... happiness is like 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. He is a lord. A lord! ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... preserved, no doubt, by the oral 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 ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... style 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 its own form grouped in successive stages against its sides and angles. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... 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 ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... 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 by the spear of the goddess Isis. The "enmity" between mankind ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... deity 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 ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... had gone away from the woods of Kamyaka, what did the sons of Pandu do in the absence of that hero capable of drawing the bow with his left hand? It seemeth to me that mighty bowman and vanquisher of armies was their refuge, as Vishnu of the celestials. How did my heroic grandsires pass their time in the forest, deprived of the company of that hero, who resembled Indra himself in prowess and never turned his back ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... unknown.[FN236] The volume, which in Pehlevi became the Javidan Khirad ("Wisdom of Ages") or the Testament of Hoshang, that ancient guebre King, and in Sanskrit the Panchatantra ("Five Chapters"), is a recueil of apologues and anecdotes related by the learned Brahman, Vishnu Sharma for the benefit of his pupils the sons of an Indian Rajah. The Hindu original has been adapted and translated into a number of languages; Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac, Greek and Latin, Persian and Turkish, under a host of names.[FN237] Voltaire[FN238] wisely remarks ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... one of the most curious and interesting monuments to be seen in the city. This is an enormous statue of the god Vishnu in his AVATARA as Narasimha, the man-lion. It was hewn out of a single boulder of granite, which lay near the south-western angle of the Krishnasvami temple, and the king bestowed a grant of lands for its maintenance. Though ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... she is angry, and a great calamity has, in consequence, come upon me and my family. Come now, let us fetch the goddess from our ancestral home, and worship her here in this place." The goddess referred to was Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. When little Daniel heard this proposal, it seemed foolishness to him, and at a favourable opening in the conversation he said to his relation, "The goddess Lakshmi has ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... 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, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... birth of Vishnu, Birth of Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Told the wise ones, Heavenward looking, Waiting, watching for thy gleaming In the darkness of the night-time, In the starless gloom of midnight; Shining Herald of the coming Of the kingdom of ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... artificial means. We subordinate the external organ in order to liberate the inner eye of the mind. The musing, pensive Hindoos, who have elongated eyes, look through the surface of things to their essence, and call the world Illusion,—the illusory energy of Vishnu. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... company there in the West knew also—"From the poisonous tree of the world two species of fruit are produced, sweet as the waters of life: Love, or the society of beautiful souls, and Poetry, whose taste is like the immortal juice Vishnu." When Emerson had finished there was a hush of silence, the usual applause of his listeners; it seemed hardly broken when Otto Dresel performed some ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... of religion. 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, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... the eighth incarnation of Vishnu under the name of Crishna, makes him then of a bluish-black color, which the name Crishna signifies. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Sage, by name Vishnu-Sarman, learned in the principles of Policy as is the angel of the planet Jupiter himself, and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Aphrodite, Dick Vishnu and Benny O'Baal, And Bacchus came on in a nightie With little pink snakes in ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... at Mendoet, and in the Tjandi Sewoe, Buddha was worshipped; but in the Temple of Loro-Jonggrang at Brambanan, and in the Temples of Kalasan, Siva (the third person of the Hindu Trinity—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva) was the central object of adoration. As the connection between the religion of Buddha and Brahma has been often misunderstood, a few words on this point may be of service ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... of Puramitra 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
... is a celebrated 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 ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... dream there descended 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 of darkness, the divine and the demoniac ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... 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 of life from the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... he received his wound. I call Vishnu to witness," yelled the wretched man, "that I did everything for him. Everything which was ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 arms ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... proceeded the goddess Bhavani, i.e., Nature, and a host of 1,180 million spirits. Among these there are three demi-gods or superior spirits, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, the Hindoo Trinity, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... ransom they demanded for a native inspector! I 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 priceless ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... a double 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
... 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
... Shiva, his son Kartakswami, and his wife Parwati, Vishnu and his wife Mahalaxmi only are mentioned in the following stories. Besides these, however, the Sun and Moon and the five principal planets obtain a certain amount of worship. The Sun is worshipped every morning by every orthodox Hindu. And Shani or Saturn inspires a wholesome fear, ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... 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 ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... controversies, are incessantly modifying and superseding the old scholastic interpretations of the mysteries, for Hindus, like Asiatics everywhere, are still in that condition of mind when a fresh spiritual message is eagerly received. Vishnu and Siva are the realistic abstractions of the understanding from objects of sense, from observation of the destructive and reproductive operations of nature; they represent among educated men separate systems of worship which, again, are parted into different schools or ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... 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 ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... 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
... 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 ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... known, 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 him."[5] This is the prevailing ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... residence in the valley. Of 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
... popular festival of the year at Benares and over the North-Western Provinces is the Ram Leela, the Play of Ram, when the life of Ram, a very popular incarnation of Vishnu, is dramatized. This drama is acted in the open air in different parts of the city, in the presence of admiring thousands. The people see Ram and his faithful spouse Seeta forced to leave their royal home by the intrigue of his mother-in-law; they see them in the forest, where Ram leads the life ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... 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 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, who is stainless in reality'; 'Him ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... proved to be mere, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Perhaps they had secret information about the domestic circumstances of their destroyer, and didn't care. If Yamen had had private means of knowing that Vishnu was on uncomfortable terms with his wife, a corrected version of the whole Hindu mythology ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... lazuli, coral, glass, amber, or wood, especially yellow berberry and sandal-wood: some had staves, and one a trident like an eel-fork, on a long staff, an emblem of the Hindoo Trinity, called Trisool Mahadeo, which represents Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, in Hindoo; and Boodh, Dhurma, and Sunga, in Boodhist theology. All were on foot, indeed ponies are seldom used in this country; the Lamas, however, walked with becoming gravity and indifference ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... earlier forms, as the Rabbinism of the Talmud, or the Romanism of the fathers does to primitive Judaism and Christianity. The pre-eminence of a sacred caste—the sanctitude of the cow—an impossible cosmogony—the worship of Siva and Vishnu—and an indefinite sort of recognition of beings like Rama, Krishna, Kali, and others, are the leading features here; the recognition of the Ramas and Krishnas being of an indefinite and equivocal character, because the extent to which the elements ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... sacred by the Hindus, because Vishnu, the Preserver, and the second person in the Brahminical trinity, was born under it. This tree is extensively planted around the temples of the Hindus, and many religious devotees pass their lives under its shade for its sanctifying influence. It is useful for other purposes; for the lac-insect ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... subordinate to it. The activity is there, the will is there. Let us think of cognition as pure as it can be, turned on itself, reflected in itself, and we have Buddhi, the pure reason, the very essence of cognition; this in the universe is represented by Vishnu, the sustaining wisdom of the universe. Now let us think of cognition looking outwards, and as reflecting itself in activity, its brother quality, and we have a mixture of cognition and activity which is called Manas, the active mind; cognition reflected in activity is Manas in man or Brahma, ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... to the stars in the Veda. But the Aurora, or Dawn, is the object of great admiration; also, the Aswins, or twin gods, who in Greece become the Dioscuri. The god of storms is Rudra, supposed by some writers to be the same as Siva. The two hostile worships of Vishnu and Siva do not appear, however, till long after this time. Vishnu appears frequently in the Veda, and his three steps are often spoken of. These steps measure the heavens. But his real ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Hindoos, where caste prejudices exist 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... village. Now these things could not both be true at the same time, unless he had taken a vow to protect the children of men. In that case his presence in the land was a benediction beyond the benediction of twenty years of full rains. He might even be one of the high gods, incarnated to serve Vishnu the Great Preserver, if what they said was true, that he had been recognised by Neela Deo, the Blue god—king of all ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... it was worshipped with such deep reverence that even in modern botany we find it named the ficus religiosa; and it was called by the earlier Christians the Devil's Tree, in accordance with their belief that all heathen rites were offered to Satan. For it was beneath the Banyan that Vishnu was born, and under it that Buddha taught his sacred lore; it is in it that Brahmins love to dwell; it is the living, green cathedral of GOD—the leafy cloister of sacred learning, ever holy, ever beautiful, never dying. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... some sort our noble profession .. of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... where we did not know before that we were 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 of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... 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 art of music, and gave ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... likewise personify the attributes of the Deity. The three Vedic divinities, Agni, Indra, and Surya, are not to be looked upon as existing independently, for all spirits are comprehended in the Universal Soul. The later Hindu trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, is not recognized by them. They do not authorize the worship of deified men, nor of images, nor of any visible forms. They admit the adoration of subordinate spirits, as those of the planets, or of the demigods ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... people are so fond, and by this means, and by selling wood to the steamboats, I have made a living and bought my library without having to work half of my time. I was determined never to leave. I swore by all the arms of Vishnu she should never say that she had driven me away. I don't know anything about Julia. But I know whose daughter she is. My young friend, beware! I pray you take good heed! ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... 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 ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... more ornate and sculptured of the buttes is Vishnu Temple, a solid mountain of rock carved into a majestic form by centuries of erosion. Wherever one stands, at the eastern end of the Canyon, whether on the north or the south, on the promontories at the rim or on the ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... "thin-bodied;" and 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
... introduced, which were not known in previous times. The divinities, Brahma, the author of all things, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer, were brought into a relation to one another, as a sort of triad. Successive incarnations of Vishnu became an article of the creed, Krishna being one of his incarnate names. For centuries Brahmanism and Buddhism existed together. Gradually Buddhism decayed, and melted into the older system; helping to modify its character, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher |
