ViṢṆu
VIṢṆU. In the age of the Ṛgveda, India's oldest religious document (c. 1200–1000 BCE), Viṣṇu must already have been a more important divine figure than it would appear from his comparatively infrequent appearances in the texts. He is celebrated in a few hymns, of which stanzas 1.22.16–21 came to be a sort of confession of faith, especially among the Vaikhānasa Vaiṣṇavas, who adapted them for consecratory purposes and for invoking the god's presence and protection. These stanzas eulogize the essential feature of the character of the Vedic Viṣṇu: namely, his taking, from the very place where the gods promote human interests, three steps, by which he establishes the broad dimensional actuality of the earthly space in which all beings abide (see also Ṛgveda 1.154.1 and 3, etc.). His highest step is in the realm of heaven, beyond mortal ken. Thus, his penetration of the provinces of the universe, in accordance with the traditional Indian interpretation of the character of the original god as the representative of pervasiveness, must be considered a central feature in the vast complex of ideas for which the name of the early Viṣṇu stood.
Virāj, the idea of extending far and wide the female principle of creation and the hypostasis of the universe conceived as a whole, came to be one of Viṣṇu's epithets.
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