Flowers for Puruna: Notes on the Cosmic Man as Visnu in Ritual Texts: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

Perhaps one of the most ubiquitous hymns in the recent study of Hinduism is that of the purunasükta. It has been claimed as the foundation of the var∫a system (although the word var∫a is in fact not used in the hymn at all); it has been interpreted as an ancient “economy of labor”; it has been understood most importantly as a cosmogonic hymn at the center of the proto-Indo-European universe, and a creation account comparable to other creation hymns in other religious traditions.1 Elsewhere in this journal issue, Neal Delmonico has looked at the hymn’s interpretation in its Upanisadic and devotional contexts,2 and deals with many
of the interpretive issues in that thread of reading. This article might be read as a ritual complement to that endeavor.