A Telugu author, scriptwriter, and translator, Vakkantham Suryanarayana Rao has more than eighty titles to his credit. The book under review Navagraha Purana is a fascinating chronological account of birth, life and glory of nine planets in great detail. The book, originally written in English by VS Rao has been translated into Hindi by Vai Shankar Murti. The book is divided into three sections namely ‘Birth of the Nine Planets’, ‘Life of the Nine Planets’ and the ‘Glory of the Nine Planets’. The book follows the ancient story telling format in which the disciples urge their Guru to tell them about the life and glory of all the nine planets. VS Rao has beautifully structured the work wherein he starts with the Sun God and then talks about all the other planets and their lives in immense detail. VS Rao explicates about the lives of the nine planets in a fictional story telling format. He weaves various stories which are intertwined and amalgamates mythology and fiction together. The text takes you deeper into Indian mythology wherein readers learn about the creation of the universe by Lord Vishnu and about the bearers of these nine planets. Stories of the Sun God subduing his raging heat to please his beloved and the Moon God waning every month after he received a curse from his Guru for lusting after his wife pull the readers into mythology, which would have been tedious if written in a non-fictional genre. Several anecdotes like the Sun God residing in the right eye of Lord Vishnu, Sheelvati wishing against sunrise to save her husband from dying and Sangya (Lord Surya’s wife) creating a replica of herself out of a shadow named Chhaya make the text a definite page turner. The book is one of its kind that systematically takes the reader into the mystical world of planets and how our lives get influenced by the blessings and fury of these planets.
October 2019, volume 43, No 10