A quick perusal suggests that but for an out of place imposition of a modern occidental gender fetish on an ancient text in the intro, it is done with quite a sympathetic eye, with fidelity to the text. The author should be commended for making it open access-- this is the future
https://twitter.com/elisa_freschi/status/1407726102261420032
of academic publication& the Australian University should also be commended for that. By publishing knowledge that few might seek behind ridiculously priced books (especially printed) there is ample choice for the knowledge to be lost & the author to be forgotten for good. This
has been the fate of several H authors of decent works in post independence India. Their good work lost& them forgotten in print books, sometimes only to be plagiarized by others. Coming to the context itself the author is incorrect, like many others before him, in thinking that
viShNu was a minor deity in the veda, even the RV. It is a very wrong thing to measure the "importance" of deity by the # of sUkta-s he gets without taking into account: 1) # of mentions; 2)the epithets used in the mention; 3) the role of the shruti-bhAga-s in the totality of the
vaidika ritual. The bottom line is viShNu& his cognates were major deity from early IE tradition, with focal cults even elsewhere in the IE world. But that error is merely 1 of following others blindly. We agree with the author that viShNu-purANa is an interesting text providing
an important step in the evolution of vaiShNava traditions. Clearly there was the classic viShNu-focal system of vedic and earlier IE provenance; then there was the more local evolution in the Indo-Iranian borderlands of the vAsudeva-sAttvata tradition. The earlier harivaMsha was
definitely focused on a version of the sAttvata tradition. But there was a parallel strand of vaiShNava tradition predominant among the vaikhAnasa-s & and an early strand of pA~ncharAtra-s that was closer to vaidika focality on viShNu. The viShNu purANa tries bring the 2 together
by giving devakIputra the focus of the "earthly" expression of the sAttvata religion a central place in the narrative. rAmachandra aikShvAkava is not given much space in this text. However, it goes on to clarify that the saMkarShaNa & vAsudeva are only amshAmsha, i.e 1/p*1/q
fractions of the primal viShNu. So these avatAra-s are only parts or minor parts of viShNu, namely two hairs dropping off from him. Thus, it places the sAttvata heroes in more meaningful hierarchy with respect to the god himself. But like the shuklayajurveda verse there is a
certain fractality. This little part of viShNu can itself have tremendous potency as exhibited by the saMkarShaNa and the vAsudeva. This hierarchy is the reverse of the late va~NgIya kArShNi reflex -- a hypertrophied sAttvatism where viShNu has receded into the background
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