A Prose English Translation of Vishnupurānam: (Based On Professor H. H. Wilson's Translation.)

In 1840 Professor Horace Hayman Wilson would publish an English translation of the Vishnu Purana in five volumes. In 1894 Manmatha Nath Dutt would write this book, basing it on Wilson's earlier translation. Wilson's book had extensive footnotes and other material more interesting to scholars than general readers, which was mostly removed. The actual translation was not shortened. That makes this book the best available English version of the Vishnu Purana. The Vishnu Purana reads like a later and shorter version of the stories in the Bhagavata Purana ( Srimad Bhagavatam ) with some details left out (The cart the baby Krishna tips over seems to be an ordinary cart, and the trees he pulls down when bound to the butter churn seem to be ordinary trees, and the fact that Vishnu appears to Hiranyakashipu as a man-lion is mentioned as almost an afterthought) and some expanded (the Buddha appears to convince the demons to abandon Vedic practices and so give the gods a chance to defeat them). Manmatha Nath Dutt translated many other Sanskrit texts himself, including the complete Ramayana and the Harivamsha . This is a completely re-typeset edition of the text that corrects many errors (bad spelling, misplaced commas, accents used where macrons were needed, inconsistent spelling of names, etc.) found in the 1894 edition. That Purāna in which Parāsara, beginning with the events of Varāha Kalpa, expounds all duties, is called Vaishnava and is said to consist of twenty-three thousand stanzas. But the actual number of verses falls far short of the enumeration of the Matsya and the Bhagavata. Vishnu Purānam consists of all the characteristics of the Purāna, namely, five specified topics and has been divided into six books. In this translation of Vishnupurānam I have principally drawn upon Professor H. H. Wilson's splendid work, and have tried, as best as lies in my power, to interpret the ancient thought entombed in this great work. My work is not so much intended for scholars as for the general readers who have not the time and leisure to read the original. Professor Wilson's book is very costly and cannot be always procured by the readers; and in the face of this difficulty I hope my edition will not be unwelcome to the general public.