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Glossary Terms Defined

The text itself

श्रीशिवमहापुराण

Śrī Śiva Mahāpurāṇa

One of the eighteen Mahāpurāṇas, given in the form Vyāsa received it from Sanatkumāra. Our own translation, verse by verse.

12,235 verses across 229 adhyāyas, each one set out in the received Sanskrit with a transliteration beside our own English and Hindi. A doubtful reading is printed as it stands and flagged, never quietly corrected. 264 claims elsewhere on this site stand on one of its verses.

Open the table of contents
  • माहात्म्य

    The Glory of the Text

    7 adhyāyas
  • विद्येश्वरसंहिता

    The Saṃhitā of Vidyeśvara

    25 adhyāyas
  • रुद्रसंहिता — सृष्टिखण्ड

    The Saṃhitā of Rudra · Sṛṣṭi Khaṇḍa

    20 adhyāyas
  • रुद्रसंहिता — सतीखण्ड

    The Saṃhitā of Rudra · Satī Khaṇḍa

    43 adhyāyas

+ 3 more sections

Master Question Registry

Top Questions Asked Across Sources

Notes our editors flagged as conceptually noteworthy while seeding the corpus. The set rotates once a day, not on every page load, so a note you find here is still here this evening.

Mantra: Basics ✓ 16 Sources

What is a Mantra Samput?

Mantra Samput is how we add Mantras together and make a compound mantra

Composition: Hanuman Chalisa ✓ 47 Sources

Is any line of the Hanuman Chalisa a later addition?

Responding to a viewer who says four lines have wrongly crept into the Hanuman Chalisa and that he will ask someone to have them corrected, the speaker agrees. Going by the view of those in the Shankaracharya parampara who state proper vidhi-vidhan, he holds that this pada was composed by someone without the standing to do so, says he will neither accept it nor let it be accepted, and adds that he acknowledges no authority above Tulsidas on the matter.

Adishakti ✓ 35 Sources

The shaktis are fundamentally one, and opened up, every link meets in a single place: Kaushiki presides over the Bhadrapada Amavasya.

The shaktis are fundamentally one; but when you open the matter up and look, all these things, all these links, come and meet at a single place. Bhagavati Kaushiki is the chief presiding upasika shakti of the Amavasya of Bhadrapada.

Pret ✓ 70 Sources

Do other religious traditions have a doctrine of ancestral progress and rebirth?

The speaker holds that they do not. He states that liberation requires coming to Sanatana Dharma, that rebirth and the ancestral doctrine exist nowhere else, and that observances such as Halloween or Shab-e-Barat do not claim to grant the dead progress.

Deity: Durga ✓ 70 Sources

What is Chandika Kopa, and when does a mistake in worship invite it?

Chandika Kopa isn't invoked by innocent mistakes — it's invoked by persisting in a known error after correct knowledge was already available.

Pitr ✓ 77 Sources

The sudha shakti in the stone is said to do the work — provided the stone is the genuine article

The sudha shakti that is in it does the work, the speaker says, and however great a bandhan the pitr have fallen into, it frees them from it. It is a tested prayoga, but obtaining a jwalamukhi stone is somewhat difficult; if you get a genuine one, the work is accomplished in one go. He adds that the pitr becoming free of bandhan is one matter, and whether they then become active, and what kinds of work they will do for you, is a separate subject.

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