CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 114 of 120

Correct — B, Vishnu Purana. The Prahlada story is set out in the first of the Vishnu Purana's six parts, at chapters 16 to 20, where the sage Parasara narrates to Maitreya how the boy Prahlada, a devotee of Vishnu, is persecuted by his father, the daitya king Hiranyakashipu, and how Vishnu takes the form of Narasimha, the man-lion, to end him. The narrative recurs later in several other Puranas, most fully and most famously in the Bhagavata, and also in the Kurma, Vamana and Narasimha Puranas and in the Yoga Vasistha. The key's claim that it was first set out here rests on the conventional ordering in which the Vishnu Purana is one of the earlier Puranas and the Bhagavata a later, more elaborate retelling. That ordering is worth holding honestly: scholarly estimates for the date of the Vishnu Purana range widely, from about 400 BCE to 900 CE, and Puranic chronology is genuinely unsettled. What is not in dispute is that the Vishnu Purana carries the story and that it is the answer this key requires.

• (a)Bhagwat Purana — The version most people actually know, and the reason this is the tempting option. The Bhagavata Purana devotes its seventh book to Prahlada and gives him his best-known speeches — but it is treated as a later and more developed retelling than the Vishnu Purana's account, not as the first.
• (c)Vamana Purana — It does carry the story, but it is centred on a different avatar altogether. As its name says, the Vamana Purana belongs to the dwarf incarnation and the humbling of Bali — the descendant of Prahlada, not Prahlada himself.
• (d)Agni Purana — The Agni Purana is the encyclopaedic one, ranging over ritual, grammar, medicine, statecraft, architecture and poetics. It is not the source to which the Prahlada narrative is traced.

The Puranas are a body of Sanskrit texts that carry cosmology, genealogy and myth, traditionally counted as eighteen major works and grouped by the deity they favour. The Vishnu Purana is the compact and coherent one of the Vaishnava group — six parts and 126 chapters, framed as Parasara's answers to Maitreya, with the first part covering creation and devotion to Vishnu. Because such texts grew by accretion over centuries, asking which one told a story first is a question about the relative age of the texts, not about a datable event.

The trap in this item is entirely one of familiarity. Holi and the Narasimha Jayanti tradition, and the retellings most students have grown up with, come through the Bhagavata Purana, so the hand goes to option (a). The examiner is asking a textual-history question instead: which Purana carries the earliest surviving version. Guard the answer with two anchors — the Vishnu Purana is the older Vaishnava text, and its Book One is where Prahlada appears. It is also worth separating the generations in the story, because papers exploit the confusion: Hiranyakashipu is killed by Narasimha, his son Prahlada becomes the model devotee, and Prahlada's great-grandson Bali is the king subdued by the dwarf Vamana.

• The Vishnu Purana carries the Prahlada narrative in Book One, chapters 16 to 20.
• It has six parts and 126 chapters, and is framed as the sage Parasara's discourse to Maitreya.
• The story also appears in the Bhagavata, Kurma, Vamana and Narasimha Puranas and in the Yoga Vasistha.
• Narasimha, the man-lion, is the avatar of Vishnu associated with the end of Hiranyakashipu.
• Scholarly dates for the Vishnu Purana range from about 400 BCE to 900 CE, so Puranic chronology should be handled with care.

• Answering Bhagavata Purana because it carries the best-known version; the question asks which text set the story out first.
• Assuming a Purana named after an avatar contains only that avatar's story — the Vamana Purana carries Prahlada too.
• Collapsing the generations: Hiranyakashipu, Prahlada and Bali are three different figures in three linked episodes.

As a text-to-story attribution, or as a match between a Purana and the deity or avatar it is centred on.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Vamana avatar of Vishnu is associated with subduing which king?

  • (a)Hiranyakashipu
  • (b)Prahlada
  • (c)Bali
  • (d)Jarasandha

  Answer(c) Bali — the daitya king, a descendant of Prahlada, whom the dwarf Vamana subdues by asking for three paces of land.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Vishnu Purana is framed as a discourse delivered by which sage?

  • (a)Vyasa
  • (b)Parasara
  • (c)Valmiki
  • (d)Narada

  Answer(b) Parasara — who narrates it to Maitreya across the text's six parts.