"Vishnu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... Ichabod, The glory is departed! 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 Over the Kremlin's pavement bright With serpentine and syenite, Steps, with five other Generals That simultaneously take snuff, For each to have pretext enough And kerchiefwise unfold his sash ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... faces on a single head. This is the "trimurti" (trinity), composed of Brahma (creator), Vishnu ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... 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 ...
— 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.
... the invention of the systematic arrangement of the sounds into a musical scale. She is represented seated on a peacock and playing a stringed instrument of the guitar kind. Brahma, himself, we find depicted as a vigorous man with four handsome heads, beating with his hands upon a small drum. Arid Vishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is represented as a beautiful youth playing upon a flute. The Hindoos still possess a peculiar kind of flute which they consider as the favorite instrument of Krishna. Furthermore, they have ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... lust 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 ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... 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 ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... 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 ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... 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
... 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
... 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
... seen, 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 ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... 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 ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... 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
... (IV. 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 ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... great strength (Bhima), came out of that tort 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 gold, and decked with rows of jingling ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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 majority of the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... 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 - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... 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 Parana, "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 ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Is not Jesus, 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 ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... 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
... 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
... 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
... questions about the 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 ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... more to be trusted than the sacred 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 me ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Bali was a demon who had conquered Indra and gained his throne, but was afterwards overcome by Vishnu at the time of his ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... resemblance as to make one wonder if those pillory an enemy with their 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 one ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... 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
... attached 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
... 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
... 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 Fish-meals. Mystery tradition not Celtic Folk-tale. Comparison ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... 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 the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... pair slain, made use of a strange metre in relating the occurrence to Brahma. This god immediately bade him employ the same in narrating the adventures of Rama, one of the seven incarnations of the god Vishnu. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... various Avatars of old India designated as "Incarnations of Vishnu," Siva "the destroyer," was ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... rival god, but each makes its own 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 ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... assertion of the demands of the heart as against the intense intellectualism of the Vednta philosophy, the exaggerated monism which that philosophy proclaimed. It took in Rmnuja's preaching the form of an ardent personal devotion to the God Vishnu, as representing the personal aspect of the Divine Nature: that mystical "religion of love" which everywhere makes its appearance at a certain level of spiritual culture, and which creeds and philosophies ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... 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 ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... 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 from the egg. Yes, it is a Heimskringla, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... 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
... 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 be discussed here. A very full account of them is given ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... naturally assert the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. "They are full and minute on Church Property" (they were sure to be that); in fact, they remind one of another forgery, pious and Aryan, 'The Institutes of Vishnu.' "Let him not levy any tax upon Brahmans," says the Brahman forger of the Institutes, which "came from the mouths of Vishnu," as he sat "clad in a yellow robe, imperturbable, decorated with all kinds of gems, while Lakshmi was stroking his ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... 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
... the form of a Venus and the passion of that goddess as well, tied to a thin, pallid bookworm ten years your senior, neglecting his pouting wife with blood full of fire for the pages of the literature of Hindoostan, prating of the loves of Ganesha and Vishnu, when a goddess awaited his own neglectful arms. So when on the day when he stepped into the box, leaving us the sole repository of the secret of his whereabouts—that the mutton-headed police might not interfere with the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... Pfeiffer 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 or stone of ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... his art 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 Khan, supposing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the native portion of the city, Captain Hosmer called the girls' attention to the many shrines, where some one was always standing with clasped hands and bent head, engaged in prayers to Parvati, perhaps, or Vishnu—for the image in the shrine differed—and to the peculiar reverence which every Hindu shows to the cow, a sacred animal to them. The gentle creature seems actually one of the family, possibly prized even more than the children, for it furnishes them with food, drink and ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... 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 ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... a discriminative intellect for the driver, and a controlled mind for the reins, reaches the end of the journey, the highest place of Vishnu (the All-pervading and ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... flame, And bore the holy Vedas[175] to the deep. Far 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 sustained, till on the crest 210 Of Himakeel,[176] yon mountain high, That darkly ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... 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 opals in ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... a great Sage, by name Vishnu-Sarman, learned in the principles of Policy as is the angel of the planet Jupiter ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... no 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 • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he received his wound. I call Vishnu to witness," yelled the wretched man, "that I did everything for him. Everything which ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 righteous; Teller ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... 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 ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the same. Such 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 ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Hindu Charvakas explain the Triad, Bramha, Vishnu and Shiva, by the sexual organs and upon Vishnu's having four arms they gloss, "At the time of sexual intercourse, each man and woman has as many." (Dabistan ii. 202.) This is the Eastern view of Rabelais' "beast ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... born 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, existed—a circumstance that decided the character of Gurameer's subsequent life. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... 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. Like GOD and NATURE, it is ever ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... goddess; heathen gods and goddesses; deva^; Jupiter, Jove &c; pantheon. Allah^, Bathala^, Brahm^, Brahma^, Brahma^, cloud-compeller, Devi, Durga, Kali, oread^, the Great Spirit, Ushas; water nymph, wood nymph; Yama, Varuna, Zeus; Vishnu [Hindu deities], Siva, Shiva, Krishna, Juggernath^, Buddha; Isis [Egyptian deities], Osiris, Ra; Belus, Bel, Baal^, Asteroth &c; Thor [Norse deities], Odin; Mumbo Jumbo; good genius, tutelary genius; demiurge, familiar; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not only to 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 God the final dissolver ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... semblance of a Hindoo god, so nearly did her heavy, compactly crouched figure, wound about with Eastern stuffs and glistening with gold, recall the images we are accustomed to associate with the worship of Vishnu. Her face, too, so far as it was visible in the subdued light, had the unresponsiveness of carven wood, and if not exactly hideous of feature, had in it a strange and haunting quality calculated to impress a sensitive mind with a sense ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... new 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 ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... Persian Mithra. There are no invocations 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 worship ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... 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 ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... Silva Gooneratne Modliar in 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 ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... before we can properly understand the character of any deity we would have to know the meaning and the numbers attached to each letter in the name, for in this way the powers and functons of the various gods were indicated. If we take as examples names familiar to everyone, Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra, the three aspects of Parabrahm in manifestation, and analyse them in the same way as the roots, they will be found to yield up their essential meaning. Form the union of B, life, R, breath, and Ma, the producer, I would translate Brahma as "the creative ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the impersonal pantheistic deity. First 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 ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... 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
... angels, doing penance for their sins; we need not, with old Pythagoras and latter Brahmins, account them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits of men in process of being purged from their offences: we need not regard them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible deities craving the idolatries of India and Egypt. The truth commends itself by mere simplicity: nakedness betrays its Eve-like innocence of guile or error: those living creatures whom we call brutes and beasts, have, in their degree, the breath ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... the Dravidian races of Southern India, continued its own social and religious evolution. It was, in fact, after the tide of Mahomedan conquest had set in that Hindu theology put on fresh forms of interpretation. The rivalry between the cults of Shiva and of Vishnu became more acute, and many of the Dharmashastras and Puranas were recast and elaborated by Shivaite and Vishnuite writers respectively in the form in which we now know them, thus affording contemporary and graphic pictures of the persistency of Hindu life and manners ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... from it into the bowl; when the 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 toe ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... 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 ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... 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 ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... authoritatively closed. New doctrines, new sects, fresh theological 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 theories ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... cleansed their raiment, and then, reclad, went to the priest on his platform, to be smeared with ashes on the forehead and marked with a little colored dot, as a certificate that they had correctly performed their vow. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, had each his worshipers and his priests, to give the appropriate mark. The "holy man" was there, either upon his bed of spikes or in an attitude which suggested torture, and ready to receive the homage, and the money as well, of his benighted ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... 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 ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... 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
... 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
... and its still thickly-leaved forests. Elephants were bathing in the waters of the sacred 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 along ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... 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
... with 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
... twisting their floating scarves, and jugglers 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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
... 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 fountain, breathed the same air summer and winter, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... 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
... visual power by 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
... 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 ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... 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
... 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 use ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... Within 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 ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... 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
... 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 old one. They ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... concludes: "May this treatise, Ananga Ranga, be beloved of man and woman, as long as the Holy River Ganges, springeth from Shiva with his wife Gauri on his left side; as long as Lakshmi loveth Vishnu; as long as Brahma is engaged in the study of the Vedas, and as long as the earth, the moon and the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... four spanking Arabs in gold-mounted trappings,—a fat and elaborate coachman, very solemn,—two tall hurkarus, or avant-couriers, supporting the box, one on either side, with studied symmetry, like Siva and Vishnu upholding the throne of Brahma,—four syces running at the horses' heads, each with his chowree, or fly-flapper, made from the tail of the Thibet cow,—a fifth before, to clear the way,— a basket of Simpkin, which is as though one should say ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... first used in the East. Some think that the figures at first used on them were of moral import: the Hindoo and Chinese cards are certainly emblematic in a very high degree; the former illustrate the ten avatars, or incarnations of the deity Vishnu; and the so-called 'paper-tickets' of the Chinese typify the stars, the human virtues, and, indeed, every variety of subject. Sir William Jones was convinced that the Hindoo game of Chaturaji—that is, 'the Four Rajahs or Kings'—a species of highly-complicated chess—was the first germ ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Scriptures, Brahmana, Mantra, Avenger, the Foremost of first Legislators, Judge, the Undecaying, God, the individual whose course is irresistible, the Ever-agoing, the First born, the individual without affections, the Soul of Rudra, the eldest Manu and the great Benefactor. Chastisement is the holy Vishnu. He is the puissant Narayana. And because he always assumes a terrible form, therefore he is called Mahapurusha. His wife Morality is also known by the names of Brahmana's Daughter, Lakshmi, Vriti, Saraswati, and Mother of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 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 lawmaker. "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 ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... interpretation of 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
... be gathered for pious purposes only, and in so doing the following prayer is offered: "Mother Tulasi, be thou propitious. If I gather thee with care, be merciful unto me. O Tulasi, mother of the world, I beseech thee." This plant is worshipped as a deity,—the wife of Vishnu, whom the breaking of even a little twig grieves and torments,—and "the pious Hindus invoke the divine herb for the protection of every part of the body, for life and for death, and in every action ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... 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. ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... 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 ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... in the same relation to certain 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 of their divine nature are referable to ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... vertical sunlight of Hindostan. Egypt and her gods are his; for him the secret chambers of Cheops are unlocked; he also is transfixed at the summit of pagodas; he is the idol, the priest, the worshipped, the sacrificed. The wrath of Brahma pursues him through the forests of Asia; he is the hated of Vishnu; Siva lies in wait for him; ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... vicinity of each village, and often in the village itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank. Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous old Brahmins. If the weather ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... for more than a 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 Good Hope for ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... provinces where other deities are more popular it is they who are similarly called in aid. The Bedari of Lahore, for instance, reproduces from the Puranas the story of the tyrant Rajah Harnakath, who brought death on himself at the hands of Vishnu for attempting to kill his son Prahlad, whose offence was that he believed in God and championed the cause of justice, in order to liken British statesmen and Anglo-Indian officials to the wicked Rajah and the Indians to Prahlad. As most British statesmen and their representatives ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... originally the god of fire, but afterwards "looked upon as the father of the evil powers, who strips the goddess of earth of her adornments, who robs Thor of his fertilizing hammer, and causes the death of Balder the beneficent sun." In Hindu mythology the Maruts, Indra, Agni and Vishnu wage war with the serpent Ahi to deliver the celestial cows or spouses, the waters held captive in the caverns of the clouds. In the Trimurti, Brahm[a] (the impersonal) is manifested as Brahm[a] (the personal creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Siva (the destroyer). In Siva is perpetuated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... 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 ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... 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 ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... 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. ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... 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 (translated into ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... superstition, whose flames overtop the icy summits of the Buddhist philosophy, and excite a deeper and more reverential awe in the imagination of the Singhalese. As the Hindus in process of time superadded to their exalted conceptions of Brahma, and the benevolent attributes of Vishnu, their dismal dreams and apprehensions, which embody themselves in the horrid worship of Siva, and in invocations to propitiate the destroyer; so the followers of Buddha, unsatisfied with the vain pretensions ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... hands, we try to see behind them something personal, and even name them after Hindu, Grecian, and Egyptian gods, as if those deities made them their abodes. Thus, one of these shrines was called by the artist, Thomas Moran, the Temple of Set; three others are dedicated respectively to Siva, Vishnu, and Vulcan; while on the apex of a mighty altar, still unnamed, a twisted rock-formation, several hundred feet in height, suggests a flame, eternally preserved by unseen hands, ascending to ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Maithil dame, He viewed the herds of gentle deer Roaming the garden free from fear. As through the sacred grove he trod He viewed the seat of many a God, Brahma and Agni,(429) Sun and Moon, And His who sends each golden boon;(430) Here Vishnu's stood, there Bhaga's(431) shrine, And there Mahendra's, Lord divine; Here His who formed this earthly frame,(432) His there from whom all beings came.(433) Vayu's,(434) and His who loves to hold The great noose, Varun(435) mighty-souled: Here was the Vasus'(436) shrine ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... 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 I stood ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... 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 ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... they have been 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
... looking-glass 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 ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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 Vishnu ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... meaning "descent," specially used in Hindu mythology (and so in English) to express the incarnation of a deity visiting the earth for any purpose. The ten Avatars of Vishnu are the most famous. The Hindus believe he has appeared (1) as a fish, (2) as a tortoise, (3) as a hog, (4) as a monster, half man half lion, to destroy the giant Iranian, (5) as a dwarf, (6) as R[a]ma, (7) again as R[a]ma for the purpose of killing the thousand-armed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... lull this watchful 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
... 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
... be claimed 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 were more happy in their entirety and ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... deluge the earth. For, be it known, it was this avanc that had occasioned the flood. However, there is a rival claimant for the honour of having destroyed the avanc, whatever that might have been, for, in Hindu Mythology, Vishnu is credited with having slain the monster that had ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... other. Under the Christian dispensation, our blessed Lord, his awful sacrifice once performed, 'ascended up on high', having 'led captivity captive', and expects the hour that shall make his foes 'his footstool'; but false gods, Jupiter, Vishnu, Odin, Thor, must constantly keep themselves, as it were, before the eyes of men, lest they should lose respect. Such gods being invariably what the philosophers call subjective, that is to say, having no existence except in the minds of those who believe in them; having ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... original Hindu castes as a symbol of their second or spiritual birth and to mark the distinction between their noble twice-born selves and the lower caste once-born Sudras. You see it is made up of three strings of spun cotton to symbolise the Hindu Trimurti (Trinity), Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, and also Earth, Air, and Heaven, the three ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... armed with his sword, sprang towards Drona, O monarch, like Vinata's son (Garuda) making a swoop at a snake. The form, O king, of Dhrishtadyumna at that time, when he sought to slay the son of Bharadwaja, resembled the form of Vishnu himself in days of yore when at the point of slaying Hiranyakasipu. He performed diverse evolutions, in fact. O Kauravya, the son of Prishata, careering in that battle, exhibited the well-known one and twenty different kinds of motion. Armed with the sword, and shield in hand, Prishata's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... composition. This was the Hitopadesa, 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 Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... but idolatry in its most 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 to the destroying ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and death were both supernatural; in the next generation the names of the elder gods get introduced into the story, and so the marvellous tradition works itself into a myth, until nothing but a personal incarnation can account for such a series of prodigies. The man was an Avatar of Vishnu or Siva; his supreme apotheosis is now complete, and the Brahmins feel warranted in providing for him a niche ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unborn child, if a girl, to the 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 ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... sanctum is the most sacred plant of the Hindoos, dedicated to Vishnu; its branches are wavy or cauliflexuous, leaves obliquely ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... 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 different ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... 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; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... 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
... positive. "Court ruling on that, about forty years ago, on Vishnu. Infanticide case, woman charged with murder in the death of her infant child. Her lawyer moved for dismissal on the grounds that murder is defined as the killing of a sapient being, a sapient being is defined as one that can talk and build a fire, and a newborn infant can ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... 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 ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 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, than the broad palms of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... of words. The most abstract expression for DEITY, which language can supply, is but a sign or symbol for an object beyond our comprehension, and not more truthful and adequate than the images of OSIRIS and VISHNU, or their names, except as being less sensuous and explicit. We avoid sensuousness only by resorting to simple negation. We come at last to define spirit by saying that it is not ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... reminds us of man's work. And the explorers have tried by the use of Oriental nomenclature to bring it within our comprehension, the East being the land of the imagination. There is the Hindoo Amphitheatre, the Bright Angel Amphitheatre, the Ottoman Amphitheatre, Shiva's Temple, Vishnu's Temple, Vulcan's Throne. And here, indeed, is the idea of the pagoda architecture, of the terrace architecture, of the bizarre constructions which rise with projecting buttresses, rows of pillars, recesses, ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... been 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, good or evil. By far ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... the Aeon, the Emanative Deity, is as a child playing at creation, an idea found in both the Hindu and Hermetic Scriptures. In the former the Universe is said to be the sport (Lila) of Vishnu, who is spoken of in one of his incarnations as Lilavatara, descending on earth for his own pleasure, when as Krishna he assumed the shape of man as a pretence (a purely Docetic doctrine), hence called Lila-manusha-vigraha; while in the latter we ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, "The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest." I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... relative to the agencies which were engaged in its organization. Having no knowledge of 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 ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... idolatrous, 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 ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... 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 World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... 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 the first, but not with the second. A square mile even of pond water ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... paid her from that time to this; 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 blessed you with wealth, but she has left us in poverty; when ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... 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. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... the gods of the elements and stars; they 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 who inhabit the air, the waters, the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Punjabee policemen, who were provided, like their brother blue-bottles at home, with staves and rattles instead of the more usual insignia of sword and shield. The houses were almost all decorated, outside and in, with grotesque mythological and other paintings, such as Vishnu annihilating Rakshus, or demons of various kinds, or wonderful battle-pieces, wherein pale-faced, unhealthy-looking people, in tailed coats and cocked hats, might be seen performing prodigies of valour, assisted by bearded and invincible Sikh warriors of ferocious exterior. The ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... that, the wizard declared that he would scatter the bones of Osiris or reveal his sacred legend, if the god proved contumacious. Similarly in India at the present day the great Hindoo trinity itself of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva is subject to the sorcerers, who, by means of their spells, exercise such an ascendency over the mightiest deities, that these are bound submissively to execute on earth below, or in heaven above, whatever commands their masters the magicians ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... ancient school of poetry, and a less ancient system 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 ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman |
