Vyasa
Unknown · India
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Peak-work percentile in the canon.
The lineage through Vyasa
Inspired(1)
who Vyasa shaped
- Thoreau carried the Gita to Walden Pond as a constant companion — and named it inside the book it helped produce
- In Walden he writes of bathing his intellect each morning in "the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta"
- The detachment and inward discipline the Gita preaches became Thoreau's own model for a deliberate life
Portraits
The Wikipedia infobox likeness of Vyasa: a modern stone sculpture of the seated bearded sage at Murudeshwar, Karnataka. Imagined likeness of a legendary figure — no contemporary portrait exists.
Yogesa, 2012
Depiction of Vyasa in the Naimisharanya forest setting; a traditional likeness of the bearded sage. Imagined/traditional likeness.
Famous Quotes
“I am Time grown old, the destroyer of worlds.”
“I am Time grown old, the destroyer of worlds, set in motion to annihilate the worlds.”
“Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people.”
“Thou seest Me as Time who kills, Time who brings all to doom, The Slayer Time, Ancient of Days, come hither to consume.”
About Vyasa
Traditional author of the Mahabharata (and so of the Bhagavad Gita embedded within it), the eighteen Puranas, and compiler of the four Vedas — Hindu tradition treats him as a sage at the origin of Sanskrit scripture. The name itself means 'compiler' or 'arranger' (from the root vyas-, to divide). Modern scholarship reads 'Vyasa' as a tradition or function rather than a single historical author: the works ascribed to him were composed and revised by many hands across centuries. The mythological Vyasa is also a character inside the Mahabharata — biological grandfather of both the Pandavas and Kauravas, occasional intervener in the plot, and (in the framing story) the poet who dictates the entire epic to the elephant-headed god Ganesha as scribe.
