30:6 Varáha Avatára. The description of the figure of the boar is much more particularly detailed in other Puráńas. As in the Váyu: "The boar was ten Yojanas in breadth, a thousand Yojanas high; of the colour of a dark cloud; and his roar was like thunder; his bulk was vast as a mountain; his tusks were white, sharp, and fearful; fire flashed from his eyes like lightning, and he was radiant as the sun; his shoulders were round, flit, and large; he strode along like a powerful lion; his haunches were fat, his loins were slender, and his body was smooth and beautiful." The Matsya P. describes the Varáha in the same words, with one or two unimportant varieties. The Bhágavata indulges in that amplification which marks its more recent composition, and describes the Varáha as issuing from the nostrils of Brahmá, at first of the size of the thumb, or an inch long, and presently increasing to the stature of an elephant. That work also subjoins a legend of the death of the demon Hiranyáksha, who in a preceding existence was one of Vishńu's doorkeepers, at his palace in Vaikuntha. Having refused admission to a party of Munis, they cursed him, and he was in consequence born as one of the sons of Diti. When the earth, oppressed by the weight of the mountains, sunk down into the waters, Vishńu was beheld in the subterrene regions, or Rasátala, by Hiranyáksha in the act of carrying it off. The demon claimed the earth, and defied Vishńu to combat; and a conflict took place, in which Hiranyáksha was slain. This legend has not been met with in any other Puráńa, and certainly does not occur in the chief of them, any more than in our text. In the Moksha Dherma of the Mahábhárata, e.35, Vishńu destroys the demons in the form of the Varáha, but no particular individual is specified, nor does the elevation of the earth depend upon their discomfiture. The Káliká Upapuráńa has an absurd legend of a conflict between Śiva as a Sarabha, a fabulous animal, and Vishńu as the Varáha, in which the latter suffers himself and his offspring begotten upon earth to be slain.

31:7 This, which is nothing more than the developement of the notion that the Varáha incarnation typifies the ritual of the Vedas, is repeated in most of the Puráńas in the same or nearly the same words.