For spiritual
evolution, a person should clearly understand the religious principles, philosophy
and knowledge contained in the Vedas, Upanishadas and Darshanas.It is not possible for an ordinary
people to understand the higher philosophical ideas depicted
in very short forms in these scriptures. So, the great sages of different times
simplified the things through the Puranas. The Puranas are meant for the general people who can not
understand higher philosophy contained in the Vedas, Upanishadas and the
Darshanas or Vedic Philosophy.The spiritual knowledge contained in
the Vedas and Upanishads described in the philosophical language and thoughts are
brought to the understanding capacity of common people through concrete examples, myths, stories,
legends, life stories of saints, kings
and great men, allegories and chronicles of great historical events in the
Puranas. While doing so, the Puranas very elaborately explain Vedic Knowledge by classifying the
subject matters into five broad categories or topics. These are sarga or creation of the constituent
materials of the Universe by the God
Almighty, Pratisarga or the creation of different Universe by different creators or Bhrahma , Vamsas or genealogies of the sages and Demigods , Manvatara or establishment of eternal religious principles during ruling periods of the Manus or rulers of administrative eras and Vamsanucharita or detailed
description of the dynasties of Kings who lived and ruled the world . Bhagavata also contains description of planetary
systems, protection of the creation by God, impetus of creativity,that is, the
desires of human being for performance of fruitive works , incarnation of God
Almighty and activities of those
incarnations , relation of the devotees with God Almighty , dissolution of the creation and supreme shelter in God Almighty after
liberation of the soul etc and all these topics are included in the five broad
divisions of the subject matters of Puranas mentioned above. Guru Harideva obeyed the
order of Lord Jagannatha and studied all
these subjects thoroughly for five years. He allotted one part
of each day for the study of each content of Bhagavata and strictly
followed that time table. Moreover as
per traditional time schedule of Jagannatha temple, he used to recite and
explain Bhagavata daily in the temple .He
continued this devotional and research oriented study of Bhagavta for
five years as a part of his
penance . (to be continued )
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