Dr. Freund Publishes Newly Discovered Varuna Purana

For the first time, the charming stories of the Varuna Purana have been published, thanks to the discovery of this ancient text by faculty member Peter Freund and his colleague Vivek Vaidyanathan.

Dr. Freund’s book contains both the Sanskrit text and an English translation. Purana is a branch of Vedic Literature that features ancient stories, and the Varuna Purana contains 10 stories portraying the full range of experience from ignorance to complete enlightenment.

Searching for the only-known manuscript of Varuna Purana after finding references to the text in an obscure catalogue in the University of Iowa Library, Mr. Vaidyanathan contacted manuscript repositories all over India. The manuscript was finally found in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library in Chennai.

Dr. Freund first converted the text from Telugu script into Sanskrit, and then translated it into English.

According to Dr. Freund, the translation follows Maharishi’s principle of sequential unfoldment: The first verse of every chapter contains in seed form the total knowledge of the chapter, which is then sequentially unfolded.

Titled Varuna Purana: Illustrating Higher States of Consciousness with Stories of Lord Shiva, the 352-page paperback book is available at amazon.com.

This is Dr. Freund’s second book.

Jim Karpen is a writer by trade, with a special focus on technology. He has a Ph.D. in English and studied the impact of the computerization of language. In addition to writing for iPhone Life magazine, he has also been writing a column about the Internet for the Iowa Source since 1994. He also edits and publishes the MUM Review.