Varaha Purana 113.36: Adhyaya 113, Shloka 36
Hymn to Varāha and Pṛthivī’s Inquiry
Prelude to the Sanatkumāra Dialogue
Pūrva Bhāga · Pṛthivī-uddhāra (Earth’s appeal and recourse to Viṣṇu)
स त्वां तारयितुं शक्तो मग्नासि यदि सागरे ।। प्रसीद मम देवेश लोकनाथ जगत्प्रभो
sa tvāṃ tārayituṃ śakto magnāsi yadi sāgare || prasīda mama deveśa lokanātha jagatprabho
sa tvAM tArayituM shakto magnAsi yadi sAgare || prasIda mama devesha lokanAtha jagatprabho
स त्वां तारयितुं शक्तो मग्नासि यदि सागरे । प्रसीद मम देवेश लोकनाथ जगत्प्रभो ॥
Sandhi Notes
- magnāsi = magnā asi
- jagatprabho = jagatprabhoḥ (vocative form prabho)
Dharaṇī (Pṛthivī)
Burdened and fearful (imagined as sunk/submerged), pleading for grace and protection.
Will you, the Lord of the universe, be gracious and rescue me even if I am sunk in the ocean?
Taking refuge (śaraṇa) in the supreme Lord who alone can deliver beings/world from existential ‘drowning’.
Cultivate humility and reliance on the divine in crisis; frame ecological/cosmic instability as a call to dharmic restoration and prayerful action.
Implied rescue of Earth from submergence in the cosmic ocean; Bhūmi petitions the Lord to save her.
The ‘ocean-submergence’ motif frames the Lord as the transcendent support who can lift the world from pralaya-like dissolution; Varāha becomes the cosmic stabilizer of dharma and the ground of being.
Implicit rather than anatomical: the act of ‘raising/saving’ functions like restoring the yajña-order (ṛta) after inundation/chaos.
Iśvara as jagat-kāraṇa and dhāraṇa (cause and sustainer): the world may ‘sink’ in nāma-rūpa flux, yet the Lord remains the rescuing substratum (adhiṣṭhāna).
Varāha Purāṇa: Earth’s stuti to Varāha/Viṣṇu in the same hymn-sequence (113.41–44)
FAQs
The ‘Earth sunk in the ocean’ motif is central to the Varāha cycle and helps trace the diffusion of the Earth-rescue narrative across Purāṇic and iconographic traditions.
The ‘ocean’ (sāgara) is a cosmological element rather than a specific sea identifiable in modern geography within this fragment.
It frames crisis response as supplication coupled with recognition of competence: turning to the agent capable of restoring balance when collapse is imminent.
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