As we all know that Purana is an ancient text of Indian Literature usually of Gods and goddesses with innate and deep use of symbols to represent things, especially in art and literature connected or related with it. The cause of the Puranas is yet to be determined without mistakes or errors. Puranas are taken to be or believed to have originated from God himself, which were afterwards compiled into texts by Sages, notably Vyasa with the help of a person who follows a teacher, especially a religious one. This compilation was done by Vyasa for the benefit of humanity in future. His disciples then handed over the knowledge contained in the Puranas to the population at large with the help of long and serious discussion of a subject in speech and writing both public and private.
This book, named “Shiva Purana”by the author Dr. A.V. Subrahmanyan, is dedicated to Bhairava who is a Shaivite deity worshipped by Hindus. In Shaivism, he is a fierce manifestation of Shiva associated with annihilation. In the Trika system Bhairava represents Supreme Reality, synonymous to Para Brahman. Kaal Bhairav has great significance in Hinduism. According to the shastras, this form of Lord Shiva is known for destroying fear. He protects his devotees from enemies like greed, anger and lust. He is considered to be beyond ‘time’ and ‘death’. According to the Puranas, Kaal Bhairava was created by Shiva to destroy demons during a war between devas and asuras and later Astanga Bhairavas were created.
Similarly this book contains selective stories from the shiva puranas (one of eighteen major texts of the Purana genre of Sanskrit texts in Hinduism, and part of the Shaivism literature corpus).
The author is a popular Neurologist of South India known fondly among his patients as Dr.AVS, who had distinguished academic career tends in writing this book for those people who has a busy and hectic schedule in their lives ending up having no time to go through the shiva puranas texts. In order to get a vivid idea about the incredible and considerable stories from the shiva puranas, the author takes a great initiative in jotting selective stories and writing precisely about them in his book. He believes that all his readers would definitely go through it and use this as a bedtime story for their children and grandchildren so that they could too have an idea about what the puranas are about!
Apart from being a popular Neurologist, he has a passion for writing Fiction and Religion genres,consisting of themes which fascinate him like Deep thinking, Emotions, Empathy, Ethics, Symbolism and Knowledge!
The book is a compilation of short stories about the Gods and characters leading the shiva puranas!
So in order to lead life, one should definitely have a strong belief in the existence of god and his all knowing powers with which the author has dropped a deep inner meaning from his novel that If God wills he can change anyone’s destiny and break the mountains into a land by his all potential powers!
This is not only a book to be read because it’s a story book but also it has religious texts and relatable factors which every religious person must know and execute!
Reviewer : Soudia Parveen
Title: Selected Stories From Shiva Purana
Author: Dr. A.V. Subrahmanyan
ISBN: 9789354465796
