The pedagogy of the eighteen Purāṇas is not a tale of monsters defeated. It is a graded description of what consciousness wants when it forgets the source. Territory. Legal immortality. Recognition. The Mother (without knowing she is the Mother). Civilisation. Hoarding. Pure opposition. And, in the rare cases — bound service to the dance that holds everything.

The yogi reads these stories as inner cartography. Which arm is rising, in me, right now? Whose dance is it drumming for? Has the corruption already entered the city, or is it still a city of gold? Am I Hiraṇyakaśipu drafting another loophole, or Prahlāda content with nothing, or — most honestly, for most of us — Bāṇāsura, with too many arms, playing for a Lord whose dance I can only partly see?