Maitreya's Questions

One morning, when Parāśara, the best of sages, had finished his morning rites, his pupil Maitreya bowed to him and asked: Teacher, from you I have learned the whole Veda, and the books of dharma, and all the limbs of the Veda in order. By your grace, even those who hate me will say that I have not laboured in vain. Now, knower of dharma, I want to hear from you how this world came to be and how it will be again; of what it is made, and from what all that moves and does not move arose; where it lay dissolved and where it will dissolve; the measure of the elements and the birth of the gods, the shape of the oceans and mountains and of the earth, of the sun and the planets; the lines of the gods and the Manus and their ages, the aeons and their divisions, the four ages and the nature of the end of an aeon; the lives of the gods and seers and kings; how the branches of the Veda were made by Vyāsa; and the dharma of the brahmins and the other classes, and of the stages of life. I want to hear it all from you, son of Vasiṣṭha's line. Turn your mind to me in kindness, so that by your grace I may know it.

And Parāśara answered him by telling him the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, from the beginning of the world to its end.