Garuda Purana
[contradictory][3][4] Its chapters deal encyclopedically with a highly diverse collection of topics,[5] including cosmology, mythology, the relationship between gods, ethics, good versus evil, various schools of Hindu philosophies, the theory of yoga, heaven and hell, karma and rebirth, ancestral rites and other soteriological topics; rivers and geography, types of minerals and stones, the testing of gems for their quality, lists of plants and herbs,[6] various diseases and their symptoms, various medicines, aphrodisiacs, and prophylactics; astronomy, astrology, the moon and planets, and the Hindu calendar and its basis; architecture, home building, and the essential features of a Hindu temple; rites of passage, charity and gift making, economy, thrift, the duties of a king, politics, and state officials and their roles and how to appoint them; and genres of literature and rules of grammar.
[1][4][7] The final chapters discuss how to practice yoga (Samkhya and Advaita types), personal development, and the benefits of self-knowledge.
[12] The version of the Garuda Purana that survives into the modern era, states Dalal, is likely from 800 to 1000 CE, with sections added in the 2nd millennium.
[4] The book Garudapuranasaroddhara, translated by Ernest Wood and SV Subrahmanyam, appeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
[14][15] This, states Ludo Rocher, created major confusion because it was mistaken for the Garuda Purana, a misidentification first discovered by Albrecht Weber.
[14] Garuda-purana-saroddhara is actually the original bhasya work (commentary) of Naunidhirama, which cites a section of the now nonexistent version of Garuda Purana as well as other Indian texts.
[14] The earliest translation of one version of the Garuda Purana, by Manmatha Nath Dutt, was published in the early twentieth century.
[18] Pintchman states that the masculine and the feminine are presented by the Garuda Purana as inseparable aspects of the same divine, metaphysical truth Brahman.
[13] Madan states that the Garuda Purana elaborates the repeatedly found theme in Hindu religious thought that the living body is a microcosm of the universe, governed by the same laws and made out of the same substances.
[20][21] The text describes Vishnu, Vaishnava festivals and puja (worship), and offers mahatmya (a pilgrimage tour guide)[22] to Vishnu-related sacred places.
[25] The dimensions of the carvings and images on the walls, edifices, pillars and the murti are recommended by the text to be certain harmonic proportions of the layout (length of a pada), the adytum and the spire.
[32] For example, it describes using jamvera fruit juice (contains lime) mixed with boiled rice starch in order to clean and soften pearls, then piercing them to make holes for jewelry.
The first one it lists is dāna (charity), which it defines as: A gift, made at a proper time and place, to a deserving person, in a true spirit of compassionate sympathy, carries the merit of all sorts of pious acts.The text similarly discusses the following virtues—right conduct, damah (self-restraint), ahimsa (non-killing, non-violence in actions, words, and thoughts), studying the Vedas, and performing rites of passage.
[35][36] The text presents different set of diet and rites of passage rules based on the class and stage of life of a person.
[35][36] In one version of the Garuda Purana, these chapters on laws of virtue are borrowed from and duplicates of nearly 500 verses found in the Yajnavalkya Smriti.
[4][9][36] The Garuda Purana asserts that the highest and most imperative religious duty is to introspect into one's own soul, seeking self-communion.
[36][41] Yet, in verses that follow, it says a man should renounce that country whose inhabitants champion prejudice, and forgo the friend who he discovers to be deceitful.
[41] The text cautions against application of knowledge which is wedded to meanness, against pursuit of physical beauty without ennobling mind, and against making friends with those who abandon their dear ones in adversity.
[39] The text also asserts that: men of excellence live with honest means, are true to their wives, pass their time in intellectual pursuits and are hospitable to newcomers.
[45] Dharma should guide the king, the rule should be based on truth and justice, and he must protect the country from foreign invaders.
[49][50] The opening verses assert that the text describes the pathology, pathogeny, and symptoms of all diseases studied by ancient sages, in terms of its causes, incubation stage, manifestation in full form, amelioration, location, diagnosis, and treatment.
[51] Parts of the pathology and medicine-related chapters of Garuda Purana, states Ludo Rocher, are similar to Nidanasthana of Vagbhata's Astangahridaya, and these two may be different manuscript recensions of the same underlying but now lost text.
[12] Susmita Pande states that other chapters of Garuda Purana, such as those on nutrition and diet to prevent diseases, are similar to those found in the more ancient Hindu text Sushruta Samhita.
After this has been mastered, states the text, the meditation should shift from saguna to nirguna, unto the subtle, abstract formless Vishnu within, with the help of a guru (teacher).
The friends or relatives of a child, dead after completing its second year of life, shall carry its corpse to the cremation ground and exhume it in fire by mentally reciting the Yama Suktam.
Rocher states that it is "entirely unsystematic work" presented with motley confusion and many repetitions in the Purana, dealing with "death, the dead and beyond".
[63] Three quite different versions of the Pretakhanda of the Garuda Purana are known, and the variation between the chapters, states Jonathan Parry, is enormous.
