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The Bhagavata Purana
Even after he has composed the awesome Mahabharata, the Maharishi Vyasa finds no peace. Narada Muni says to him, ‘Ordinary men will be delighted by your work, but what about the Sages of heaven and earth? You have described the human life, its strife and its ends, but you have not yet described the Lord himself. You must turn your great gift to that task; only then will you find peace.’ Veda Vyasa composes the Bhagavata Purana, in eighteen thousand slokas and twelve kandas. He teaches it to his illumined son Suka, who narrates the ‘Secret Purana’ to Yudhishtira’s heir, King Parikshit, on the banks of the Ganga. The Bhagavata Purana is a living embodiment of the Lord Narayana and claims to bestow moksha merely by being heard. Just before Krishna, the Avatara, leaves the world, Uddhava says to him, ‘leave us a tangible form, Lord, in which we can find you, touch you, and be near you.’ Krishna enters the Bhagavata Purana with all of his being. This book is a full literary rendering of the Bhagavata Purana, bringing all the wonder, wisdom and grace of the Book of God to the modern reader.
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First published December 31, 1899
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 6, 2025
Ramesh Menon’s ‘The Bhagavata Purana’ is basically the literary equivalent of opening a window into the divine and having a warm, blue-skinned breeze sweep in and rearrange your inner furniture.
Menon has always had a gift for retelling mythology with tenderness and cinematic sweep, but here, he reaches a whole new level of devotional storytelling.
This isn’t just a purana retold; it’s the ‘Bhagavata’ experienced — luminous, emotional, almost musical.
The original ‘Bhagavata Purana’ is famously sprawling: cosmology, philosophy, avatars, yogic wisdom, metaphysics, and of course, the life of Krishna in all its sweetness and ferocity.
Menon handles this with the confidence of someone who has walked these mythic corridors for years. He trims the labyrinth without losing its essence. The narrative feels fluid, intuitive, and astonishingly intimate, even though it spans creation to apocalypse.
The Krishna sections — the heart of the Purana — are where the book absolutely glows. Menon’s storytelling makes Vrindavan feel like it’s happening right next door: the flute-song drifting through the trees, the Gopikas melting into devotional rapture, Yasoda’s fierce maternal love, Krishna’s mischievous divinity shimmering in every gesture.
He captures Krishna the way the tradition remembers him — not as a god-on-a-pedestal but as a presence who dissolves the ego, softens the heart, and invites you into play as a form of worship.
What’s impressive is how Menon handles the ‘philosophical’ undercurrent without making it heavy.
The teachings on bhakti, dharma, cosmic cycles, and liberation are woven into the narrative like threads of quiet gold.
You read not just with your mind but with something deeper — the book nudges the reader into a reflective, almost meditative state.
Menon also doesn’t shy away from the darker tones of the Purana: Kamsa’s terror, the destruction that accompanies divine intervention, the inevitable impermanence of worldly life.
But even in these moments, there’s a compassionate clarity. The Purana’s message — that divine love is the one stable reality — comes through cleanly, without sermonizing.
Stylistically, the prose is silky, rhythmic, and emotionally open. Menon knows when to embellish and when to step back, letting the ancient voice speak through the centuries. There’s a devotional pulse beneath every chapter, steady and sincere.
If you’ve ever wanted to experience the ‘Bhagavata Purana’ without wrestling with dense Sanskritic commentary, Menon’s retelling is a gorgeous, generous doorway — immersive, heartfelt, and surprisingly transformative.
It’s the kind of book you don’t just read; you breathe.
Most recommended.
Menon has always had a gift for retelling mythology with tenderness and cinematic sweep, but here, he reaches a whole new level of devotional storytelling.
This isn’t just a purana retold; it’s the ‘Bhagavata’ experienced — luminous, emotional, almost musical.
The original ‘Bhagavata Purana’ is famously sprawling: cosmology, philosophy, avatars, yogic wisdom, metaphysics, and of course, the life of Krishna in all its sweetness and ferocity.
Menon handles this with the confidence of someone who has walked these mythic corridors for years. He trims the labyrinth without losing its essence. The narrative feels fluid, intuitive, and astonishingly intimate, even though it spans creation to apocalypse.
The Krishna sections — the heart of the Purana — are where the book absolutely glows. Menon’s storytelling makes Vrindavan feel like it’s happening right next door: the flute-song drifting through the trees, the Gopikas melting into devotional rapture, Yasoda’s fierce maternal love, Krishna’s mischievous divinity shimmering in every gesture.
He captures Krishna the way the tradition remembers him — not as a god-on-a-pedestal but as a presence who dissolves the ego, softens the heart, and invites you into play as a form of worship.
What’s impressive is how Menon handles the ‘philosophical’ undercurrent without making it heavy.
The teachings on bhakti, dharma, cosmic cycles, and liberation are woven into the narrative like threads of quiet gold.
You read not just with your mind but with something deeper — the book nudges the reader into a reflective, almost meditative state.
Menon also doesn’t shy away from the darker tones of the Purana: Kamsa’s terror, the destruction that accompanies divine intervention, the inevitable impermanence of worldly life.
But even in these moments, there’s a compassionate clarity. The Purana’s message — that divine love is the one stable reality — comes through cleanly, without sermonizing.
Stylistically, the prose is silky, rhythmic, and emotionally open. Menon knows when to embellish and when to step back, letting the ancient voice speak through the centuries. There’s a devotional pulse beneath every chapter, steady and sincere.
If you’ve ever wanted to experience the ‘Bhagavata Purana’ without wrestling with dense Sanskritic commentary, Menon’s retelling is a gorgeous, generous doorway — immersive, heartfelt, and surprisingly transformative.
It’s the kind of book you don’t just read; you breathe.
Most recommended.
September 27, 2017
I was active in ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness) from 1977-79. I haven’t practiced the religion since I left, but I still find myself to be interested in its philosophy and scriptures, for what that’s worth.
I first encountered ISKCON writings in my college library, starting with Krishna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead and continuing with the Bhagavad Gita and other books. Their most impressive book, at least in size, was Srila Prabhupada’s translation of Srimad Bhagavatam. It took up several shelves and each volume contained both translated verses and elaborate (and to my young mind, repetitive) commentary. I found myself reading the verses and skipping most of the commentary, and found myself wishing for a translation that lacked that commentary and included the R rated details that I felt certain Srila Prabhupada was leaving out.
If Ramesh Menon’s translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam (AKA Bhagavata Purana) had been available back then it would have seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I would have read it and probably never would have visited the Evanston Hare Krishna temple or done any of the foolish things described in my own memoir of those days. It may seem strange to say it, since those days did not end happily for me, but that would have been a shame.
The problem with this book is that it is not a simple, literal translation, but it is marketed as such. It bears the same relationship to the actual Bhagavata Purana as a Cecil B DeMille movie does to the Bible. DeMille’s movies are a sexed up version of their source material, and the more intelligent members of the movie going public understand that. If a sincere spiritual seeker took them as anything else, there are plenty of Bibles around where he can read the original story.
Menon’s book, on the other hand, pretends to be a literal translation, to the point where important passages are shown as untranslated Sanskrit passages before the translation. If he had just done that, I wouldn’t complain. The problem is, he adds stories he made up himself to the text, embellishes passages having anything to do with sex, and adds sex where it doesn’t exist in the original. He also does what I must conclude are mistranslations. For example, he refers to the BP as “the secret Purana”. Srila Prabhupada told us it was “the spotless Purana”, in other words without flaw. That translation makes a great deal more sense than Menon’s.
Another thing Menon does is refer to the cowherds Krishna grew up with as Gypsies. This is not accurate, even based on Menon's own translation. Krishna’s father Nanda is described as constantly giving away thousands of cows to the Brahmans, and not just cows but decorated cows, with horns plated with gold or silver. He must have had more money than Joel Osteen. He was no gypsy.
Where Menon adds sexual incidents is of course in the stories of the love of the gopis. In the original text (from Prabhupada’s translations and others) there is no mention of Krishna and the gopis actually having sexual intercourse. The BP is not shy about people having sex. There are many incidents in the BP as well as in the Mahabharata where something happens specifically because someone was having sex, and the text tells you as much. It isn’t described in any detail, but you are told without doubt that it happened. For example, in an early section of the book two great demons are born because a woman couldn’t wait a half hour to have sex.
My point is, Krishna’s loving exploits with the gopis are not described as including actual shagging. You’d never know that from reading Menon’s “translation”.
While I was not impressed with Srila Prabhupada’s extensive commentary back in 1977, I have since come around. The commentary is important and necessary. Someone might disagree with it, but at least it represents an actual tradition in Hinduism and isn’t something made up on the spot.
The BP expounds a philosophy with all of its stories, and Menon’s translation is so vague in places that you don’t get a clear idea of what that philosophy is. You can’t determine whether the BP says that the ultimate truth is personal or impersonal, or whether Krishna is the original form of God or merely an avatar of Vishnu.
I will not judge whether the philosophy of the BP is true or not. Having said that, books in general and scriptures especially deserve to be translated without distorting the intent of the original author, and this book in my opinion does not do that.
I first encountered ISKCON writings in my college library, starting with Krishna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead and continuing with the Bhagavad Gita and other books. Their most impressive book, at least in size, was Srila Prabhupada’s translation of Srimad Bhagavatam. It took up several shelves and each volume contained both translated verses and elaborate (and to my young mind, repetitive) commentary. I found myself reading the verses and skipping most of the commentary, and found myself wishing for a translation that lacked that commentary and included the R rated details that I felt certain Srila Prabhupada was leaving out.
If Ramesh Menon’s translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam (AKA Bhagavata Purana) had been available back then it would have seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I would have read it and probably never would have visited the Evanston Hare Krishna temple or done any of the foolish things described in my own memoir of those days. It may seem strange to say it, since those days did not end happily for me, but that would have been a shame.
The problem with this book is that it is not a simple, literal translation, but it is marketed as such. It bears the same relationship to the actual Bhagavata Purana as a Cecil B DeMille movie does to the Bible. DeMille’s movies are a sexed up version of their source material, and the more intelligent members of the movie going public understand that. If a sincere spiritual seeker took them as anything else, there are plenty of Bibles around where he can read the original story.
Menon’s book, on the other hand, pretends to be a literal translation, to the point where important passages are shown as untranslated Sanskrit passages before the translation. If he had just done that, I wouldn’t complain. The problem is, he adds stories he made up himself to the text, embellishes passages having anything to do with sex, and adds sex where it doesn’t exist in the original. He also does what I must conclude are mistranslations. For example, he refers to the BP as “the secret Purana”. Srila Prabhupada told us it was “the spotless Purana”, in other words without flaw. That translation makes a great deal more sense than Menon’s.
Another thing Menon does is refer to the cowherds Krishna grew up with as Gypsies. This is not accurate, even based on Menon's own translation. Krishna’s father Nanda is described as constantly giving away thousands of cows to the Brahmans, and not just cows but decorated cows, with horns plated with gold or silver. He must have had more money than Joel Osteen. He was no gypsy.
Where Menon adds sexual incidents is of course in the stories of the love of the gopis. In the original text (from Prabhupada’s translations and others) there is no mention of Krishna and the gopis actually having sexual intercourse. The BP is not shy about people having sex. There are many incidents in the BP as well as in the Mahabharata where something happens specifically because someone was having sex, and the text tells you as much. It isn’t described in any detail, but you are told without doubt that it happened. For example, in an early section of the book two great demons are born because a woman couldn’t wait a half hour to have sex.
My point is, Krishna’s loving exploits with the gopis are not described as including actual shagging. You’d never know that from reading Menon’s “translation”.
While I was not impressed with Srila Prabhupada’s extensive commentary back in 1977, I have since come around. The commentary is important and necessary. Someone might disagree with it, but at least it represents an actual tradition in Hinduism and isn’t something made up on the spot.
The BP expounds a philosophy with all of its stories, and Menon’s translation is so vague in places that you don’t get a clear idea of what that philosophy is. You can’t determine whether the BP says that the ultimate truth is personal or impersonal, or whether Krishna is the original form of God or merely an avatar of Vishnu.
I will not judge whether the philosophy of the BP is true or not. Having said that, books in general and scriptures especially deserve to be translated without distorting the intent of the original author, and this book in my opinion does not do that.
December 19, 2024
This review requires background. I was raised Vaishnav and, by age 17, twice initiated through the Gaudiya Math. I was always taught the ultimate aim in life was to emulate Radharani in her love for Krishna - who is the supreme God - and that 500 years ago Krishna wanted to understand this love, so he incarnate as a brahmachari named Chaitanya, who was Radha-Krishna in one body. You take these things for granted when you're raised with them from birth and they're all you've ever known to be 'true'.
Just as many Christians I've met have never fully read the Bible, few Vaishnavs have read their own holy books. If they HAVE, they will be the Bhaktivedanta translations, rife with endless purports telling us how to interpret things. The key texts are the Bhagavad-Gita and the Bhagavatam. Other stories, such as the Ramayana, I believe most people know through the summaries found in the Bhagavatam, or through hearsay - largely the latter, as most people also know the stories found in the Bhagavatam through hearsay.
I have now read the Mahabharata in full, so I know how distorted the message of the Bhagavad-Gita has become by being extracted and read in isolation with those misleading purports. Now I've read the Bhagavatam, also known as the Bhahavat Purana. With all that in mind, here's my review.
This is an excellent translation, taking the original verse and converting it into easily readable prose. I've compared the meanings of select passages to another older translation and they're the same - and my goodness, was this not abridged! It went on and on and on. By the time I hit the twelfth canto, it was like the last Lord of the Rings film; it must have ended and then restarted and ended again at least ten times. When I finally reached the last page, I was expecting more. I was in disbelief that it was over - but thank God it was.
A little rudimentary research will tell you the original Sanskrit text was composed long after things like the Siva Purana or the Mahabharata. There are also astronomical references all over that flat out prove it was written less than 2,000 years ago, rather than the 5,000 years I was always told it was. So, no, this book is NOT older than the Jews and it is NOT the origin of everything. Those kinds of statements smack of ignorance and bigotry.
In the opening canto, the authors tell us they believe older stories, including the Mahabharata, basically got it wrong, and the purpose of this book is to retell all the old stories 'the right way'. So they even admit it's newer. And my summary of this book is that it's a rewrite of a lot of the Siva and Brahma Puranas, but with all the older messages about Siva being the original God and Vishnu his counterpart flipped around so that Vishnu is ultimate. Also new is the addition of Krishna, who never featured in any older Indian beliefs or legends. Suddenly he's God. Suddenly analytical philosophy comes into the stories, rather than letting the (rather obvious) metaphors speak for themselves. And it's all so convoluted. It very much feels like Plato, Gnosticism and Buddhism came along and the people, under all these influences, were trying very hard to fit these new ideas into their old belief systems. Suddenly these genuinely old and possibly 5,000-year-old stories about Siva's sex life have additional commentary describing it all as 'spiritual sex' that only the ignorant would mistake as lustful. They were also clearly trying to unite various factions of belief in the region by saying all the gods of old are ultimately one - Vishnu. So it was fascinating from an historical perspective, seeing how people's ideologies evolved...but I don't buy it as ultimate truth.
The key point that stood out for me was that RADHA ISN'T IN THIS BOOK. Every story I was ever told was attributed to Radha is, in fact, just the gopis. And none of them is named, so Lalita and Vishakha and all of them aren't real. There is one line during the Rasa dance section when Krishna disappears and the gopis see a woman's footprints beside his, heading off through the trees. They say she must have worshipped him best. There's a footnote to say this is the only possible reference to Radha in the text.
I was shocked. I didn't believe it. Surely it was a fault of the translation! So I researched it and, no, the translation is fine. Turns out the first mention of Radha and other gopis is in a poem called the Gita Govinda, written in the 12th century, which wildly reimagines those stories. It comes from the word for 'best worshipper' containing the word 'radha'. You know what that means? The entire foundation of everything I was ever taught to believe is not even real. Turns out Radha is only recognised by Vaishnavism and one other tiny Indian cult I've never heard of. The rest of the world thinks it's crazy. I read a quote from 'Prabupadha' saying Radha's identity was deliberately 'hidden' from the 'ignorant'. Suuuure.
I guess the poet really got off on the erotica in that story, because honestly, the whole of the tenth canto - all the Krishna stories - is sex and violence. I lost count of how many people's heads he kicked off people's shoulders; and far from preaching vegetarianism (in fact, in either the 11th or 12th canto Krishna even says it's okay to kill animals, as long as you don't use excessive violence), Krishna frequently yanks the tusks right out of elephants' heads and gores them with them. But it's okay because they're 'evil' elephants. And when Krishna walks by, women's clothing literally falls right off their bodies. There were endless wet t-shirt scenes - Krishna splashing the women with water so their nipples would stand out, and all the other men getting off on watching. The women frequently had lesbian orgies. And when they couldn't get their hands on Krishna, Balarama would do. All these women were married to other men, by the way, but that's okay too, because Krishna is God. That's how God would act, right? It's also worth noting I was always told only a 'pure devotee' is allowed to read the Krishna stories, because the ignorant will mistake all of this for real sex and not understand that it's all spiritual play. Riiight. More like if we read it, we'll realise everything we've been told is bull. And I want to know how they even found all these women to sleep with, when all the tiresome genealogy lists only seemed to feature men.
What particularly got me was not the sex but the fact that it kept saying while Krishna did all these things, he was detached and unaffected. How is it admirable to have sex with 16,108 women and not even CARE? And how does it make sense when it's alternated with endless messages that sex is bad, we're not the body, and 'a woman's body is a filthy and vile thing' that is just 'worm food'??? Honestly, when I started reading things like that, I was just sickened. This is not religion; it's rampant sexism. Seriously, what happened 2,000 years ago to make so many men so misogynistic? The world didn't start out that way. And notably, this book was written entirely for men. Women are described as faithless and only interested in sex, dragging men down with them, and heaven is then paradoxically populated with naked gorgeous women ready to fulfill your every desire. It's nuts.
I want to state that the Siva Purana and the Mahabharata were NOT LIKE THAT. Siva is paired with a goddess of equal worth, for a start, who actually has a personality and isn't just a whore. In the Mahabharata, Balarama was a completely different character. He was a pacifist and an ascetic. I really, really liked him. Also, the Bhagavat Purana distorted the battle of Kuruksetra and claimed Dritharashta and Duryodhana were evil and horrible, when in the original story they really weren't, and Balarama even favoured them and was devastated at the war. At the end of the war, he was furious with Krishna for supporting it.
I don't know if Krishna was real or not. If he was, he was wildly mythologised, I'm sure - especially since so much of his birth story is right out of the Jesus story, and they're both often symbolised by fish (Pisces) - and the Greeks occupied both India and the Middle East at that time - and statues of Krishna with his flute are IDENTICAL to statues of Bacchus. All I know is he's not part of the original Indian belief system. The stories of the wars between the devas and the asuras are so clearly much, much, much older and from a time of what we now call paganism. Siva, Vishnu and Brahma are from an era of sabianism. These heroes who came along later...it's an evolution, and I find the cold loveless philosophy that was built into it all in this book really offputting and occasionally angering.
So, in summary, this book is very interesting from an historical perspective, but I highly recommend reading it AFTER reading the older texts - and I'm so relieved I've finished it. The Mahabharata will forever remain one of my favourite books, but any doubts I might have had about leaving Vaishnavism are officially dead.
Just as many Christians I've met have never fully read the Bible, few Vaishnavs have read their own holy books. If they HAVE, they will be the Bhaktivedanta translations, rife with endless purports telling us how to interpret things. The key texts are the Bhagavad-Gita and the Bhagavatam. Other stories, such as the Ramayana, I believe most people know through the summaries found in the Bhagavatam, or through hearsay - largely the latter, as most people also know the stories found in the Bhagavatam through hearsay.
I have now read the Mahabharata in full, so I know how distorted the message of the Bhagavad-Gita has become by being extracted and read in isolation with those misleading purports. Now I've read the Bhagavatam, also known as the Bhahavat Purana. With all that in mind, here's my review.
This is an excellent translation, taking the original verse and converting it into easily readable prose. I've compared the meanings of select passages to another older translation and they're the same - and my goodness, was this not abridged! It went on and on and on. By the time I hit the twelfth canto, it was like the last Lord of the Rings film; it must have ended and then restarted and ended again at least ten times. When I finally reached the last page, I was expecting more. I was in disbelief that it was over - but thank God it was.
A little rudimentary research will tell you the original Sanskrit text was composed long after things like the Siva Purana or the Mahabharata. There are also astronomical references all over that flat out prove it was written less than 2,000 years ago, rather than the 5,000 years I was always told it was. So, no, this book is NOT older than the Jews and it is NOT the origin of everything. Those kinds of statements smack of ignorance and bigotry.
In the opening canto, the authors tell us they believe older stories, including the Mahabharata, basically got it wrong, and the purpose of this book is to retell all the old stories 'the right way'. So they even admit it's newer. And my summary of this book is that it's a rewrite of a lot of the Siva and Brahma Puranas, but with all the older messages about Siva being the original God and Vishnu his counterpart flipped around so that Vishnu is ultimate. Also new is the addition of Krishna, who never featured in any older Indian beliefs or legends. Suddenly he's God. Suddenly analytical philosophy comes into the stories, rather than letting the (rather obvious) metaphors speak for themselves. And it's all so convoluted. It very much feels like Plato, Gnosticism and Buddhism came along and the people, under all these influences, were trying very hard to fit these new ideas into their old belief systems. Suddenly these genuinely old and possibly 5,000-year-old stories about Siva's sex life have additional commentary describing it all as 'spiritual sex' that only the ignorant would mistake as lustful. They were also clearly trying to unite various factions of belief in the region by saying all the gods of old are ultimately one - Vishnu. So it was fascinating from an historical perspective, seeing how people's ideologies evolved...but I don't buy it as ultimate truth.
The key point that stood out for me was that RADHA ISN'T IN THIS BOOK. Every story I was ever told was attributed to Radha is, in fact, just the gopis. And none of them is named, so Lalita and Vishakha and all of them aren't real. There is one line during the Rasa dance section when Krishna disappears and the gopis see a woman's footprints beside his, heading off through the trees. They say she must have worshipped him best. There's a footnote to say this is the only possible reference to Radha in the text.
I was shocked. I didn't believe it. Surely it was a fault of the translation! So I researched it and, no, the translation is fine. Turns out the first mention of Radha and other gopis is in a poem called the Gita Govinda, written in the 12th century, which wildly reimagines those stories. It comes from the word for 'best worshipper' containing the word 'radha'. You know what that means? The entire foundation of everything I was ever taught to believe is not even real. Turns out Radha is only recognised by Vaishnavism and one other tiny Indian cult I've never heard of. The rest of the world thinks it's crazy. I read a quote from 'Prabupadha' saying Radha's identity was deliberately 'hidden' from the 'ignorant'. Suuuure.
I guess the poet really got off on the erotica in that story, because honestly, the whole of the tenth canto - all the Krishna stories - is sex and violence. I lost count of how many people's heads he kicked off people's shoulders; and far from preaching vegetarianism (in fact, in either the 11th or 12th canto Krishna even says it's okay to kill animals, as long as you don't use excessive violence), Krishna frequently yanks the tusks right out of elephants' heads and gores them with them. But it's okay because they're 'evil' elephants. And when Krishna walks by, women's clothing literally falls right off their bodies. There were endless wet t-shirt scenes - Krishna splashing the women with water so their nipples would stand out, and all the other men getting off on watching. The women frequently had lesbian orgies. And when they couldn't get their hands on Krishna, Balarama would do. All these women were married to other men, by the way, but that's okay too, because Krishna is God. That's how God would act, right? It's also worth noting I was always told only a 'pure devotee' is allowed to read the Krishna stories, because the ignorant will mistake all of this for real sex and not understand that it's all spiritual play. Riiight. More like if we read it, we'll realise everything we've been told is bull. And I want to know how they even found all these women to sleep with, when all the tiresome genealogy lists only seemed to feature men.
What particularly got me was not the sex but the fact that it kept saying while Krishna did all these things, he was detached and unaffected. How is it admirable to have sex with 16,108 women and not even CARE? And how does it make sense when it's alternated with endless messages that sex is bad, we're not the body, and 'a woman's body is a filthy and vile thing' that is just 'worm food'??? Honestly, when I started reading things like that, I was just sickened. This is not religion; it's rampant sexism. Seriously, what happened 2,000 years ago to make so many men so misogynistic? The world didn't start out that way. And notably, this book was written entirely for men. Women are described as faithless and only interested in sex, dragging men down with them, and heaven is then paradoxically populated with naked gorgeous women ready to fulfill your every desire. It's nuts.
I want to state that the Siva Purana and the Mahabharata were NOT LIKE THAT. Siva is paired with a goddess of equal worth, for a start, who actually has a personality and isn't just a whore. In the Mahabharata, Balarama was a completely different character. He was a pacifist and an ascetic. I really, really liked him. Also, the Bhagavat Purana distorted the battle of Kuruksetra and claimed Dritharashta and Duryodhana were evil and horrible, when in the original story they really weren't, and Balarama even favoured them and was devastated at the war. At the end of the war, he was furious with Krishna for supporting it.
I don't know if Krishna was real or not. If he was, he was wildly mythologised, I'm sure - especially since so much of his birth story is right out of the Jesus story, and they're both often symbolised by fish (Pisces) - and the Greeks occupied both India and the Middle East at that time - and statues of Krishna with his flute are IDENTICAL to statues of Bacchus. All I know is he's not part of the original Indian belief system. The stories of the wars between the devas and the asuras are so clearly much, much, much older and from a time of what we now call paganism. Siva, Vishnu and Brahma are from an era of sabianism. These heroes who came along later...it's an evolution, and I find the cold loveless philosophy that was built into it all in this book really offputting and occasionally angering.
So, in summary, this book is very interesting from an historical perspective, but I highly recommend reading it AFTER reading the older texts - and I'm so relieved I've finished it. The Mahabharata will forever remain one of my favourite books, but any doubts I might have had about leaving Vaishnavism are officially dead.
November 9, 2017
he Sreemad Bhagavatham is one of the oldest puranas that talks about the greatness of Lord Vishnu .Although it discusses all his avatars the major portions of the text discuss his birth ,mischief and exploits as Lord Krishna. Divided into 12 skandas with over 30,000 verses it is massive .I have always wanted to read this because although I am a great believer and lover of Vishnu ,I always had a lot of questions in my mind on who is Vishnu,what is the origin of Vaishnavism ,why do we say that he is indestructible and so on..I realised the answers are in the ancient scriptures which are all in Sanskrit ,a language I am ignorant of. However as Rumi says"What you seek is seeking you ", I stumbled upon this English translation of the Bhagavatham written by Ramesh Menon three years ago. It is a wonderful translation and has captured the spirit of the scripture. I It took me six months to plow through it and reading it was a spiritual experience by itself.It is indeed a fantastic translation and the translator has tried to maintain the essential spirit of the purana throughout the translation
December 22, 2014
a fascinating read. really a very long book but the stories are out of this world and state some amazing philosophical knowledge. loved it.
August 9, 2018
Without reading either the original Sanskrit verses, or other translations, it is hard to say if there are any mistakes/wrong interpretations.
I was already familiar with some of the mythology, and hence this was an easy read for me. This covers a big part of Hindu mythology, and it is better to approach it as a fictional novel rather than philosophical as that gets pretty confusing.
I was already familiar with some of the mythology, and hence this was an easy read for me. This covers a big part of Hindu mythology, and it is better to approach it as a fictional novel rather than philosophical as that gets pretty confusing.
July 4, 2023
A timeless book which has something for every kind of spiritual seeker, with more focus on Bhakti. Evokes a deep sense of connection to the beloved Brahman and contains scores of passages to meditate upon and reflect, as well as guidance to live by for progress in spiritual evolution.
March 8, 2019
Very enjoyable/well written stories
November 19, 2020
Excellently written
Very well written..not a concise treatise but an in depth discussion. It is also not just transliteration of the sanskrit shlokas
Very well written..not a concise treatise but an in depth discussion. It is also not just transliteration of the sanskrit shlokas
May 23, 2025
The scripture is a compendium of the lives of Vishnu as his avatars come to earth to persevere and protect us from the infamous asuras… from Krishna to Rama to the dwarf that steps upon the head of a demon as his last breath and it is seldom spoke of in the west but the Buddha is an avatar of Vishnu and the final avatar of course is the least spoken of and perhaps most sacred KALKI
October 17, 2013
“A read that I thought was going to be too Philosophical or too strenous... strangely I find this as a vry fascinating read and just feeling proud that thankgod I made the effort to pick this heavy book... It's FANTASTIC.”
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