The critical study of the Purāņas, which was
inaugurated
by
Mr.
Mr.
Cambridge History of India - v1
The laws, namely, frequently contradict
one another either by implication or directly, not only the laws in general
but those of the same code and even the laws placed in juxtaposition.
An example of such contradiction is what may be found in Manu's code
respecting the sale of a daughter. In vill, 204, 'Manu declares' that if one
girl has been shown to a prospective bridegroom and another is given,
he may marry them both for the same price. In iii, 51 the same code
1 Apparently a murderer might expiate his crime by dying for the king in battle
(Apastamba, 1,24. 21), and even, “if he fights three times, when not slain, he is freed'
(Vas. , Dh. C. , XX, 28). This antique provision is not preserved in the later law.
9
## p. 260 (#294) ############################################
260
(CH.
GROWTH OF LAW AND LEGAL INSTITUTIOVS
we
a
a
a
(presumably the same Manu) says 'Let no wise father take even a small
price for his daughter. . . for small or great this would be a sale, ; and
finally in ix, 97,
read :
'If the giver of the price die after the
price for a girl has been paid, she shall be given to the (bridegroom's)
brother if she is willing,' and immediately after (1x, 98), 'Even a slave
should no! accept a price in exchange for his daughter,' with a couple
of verses following in the tone of the passage above, repudiating the 'sale
of a daughter. ' Yet in viii, 366, under the head of the fifteenth title
of law, it is stated that a low-caste man courting a woman of the highest
caste deserves death (or corporal punishment) ; but one who courts
an equal shall ‘pay the price' (and take her) if her father consents. It
was an old provision that a fee or price (a yoke of oxen) should be paid to
the father, and though, this was softened down to a 'fee' or 'tax' (çulka),
yet the advanced code objects formally to this business transaction. At
the same time the old provision is retained, because it was
a part of
hereditary traditional law. In the epic also, the rule against selling a
daughter is recorded ; but so strong is the feeling against violating family-
law that the man who purposes to sell his daughter, because it is the
custom in my family,' is upheld in doing so by a saint, who even declares
that the sale is justified by the ancients and by God (Mbh. , I, 113, 9 f. ).
Here the girl is bought with gold and elephants and other costly things.
On the other hand, as a matter of dignity, the father of an aristocratic girl,
more particularly a princess, bas in effect heavy expenses. Thus when
king Virāța weds his daughter he bestows upon his son-in-law
thousand horses and two hundred elephants (Mbh, iv, 72, 36). The didactic
epic says that a man who sells his daughter goes to hell (XIII, 45, 18); there
is a general Sūtra rule against selling any human being (Gaut. , VII, 14. )
In regard to infant marriages the Sūtras generally admit the
advisability of marrying a girl when she is still too young to wear clothes,
that is, before she becomes adult, or shows signs of maturity. This latter
law and practice are all at variance on this point. One of the epic heroes
marries at sixteen a princess still playing with her dolls but old enough
to become a mother shortly afterwards. The epic rule is that a bride-
groom of thirty should marry a girl of ten, a bridegroom of twenty-one a
girl of seven (XIII, 44, 14). Arrian (23, 9) reports that Indian girls were
married at seven. Sītā is said to have married Rāma at six ! The rule of
Manu is that a bridegroom of thirty shall marry a girl of twelve, one of
twenty-four, a girl of eight (1x, 94) ; he also recommends that a girl shall not
marry at all unless a suitable bridgroom appear ; but again he countenances
infant-marriages (1X, 88 and 89).
1 The purchase of a wife is the 'demoniac' form of marriage formally permitted
in the case of a Vaicya and slave (Manu. III, 24). These two classes ‘are not particular
about wives' Baudh. , Dh. S. , I, 11, 20, 14).
seven
>
a
## p. 261 (#295) ############################################
XII]
MARRIAGE : SUTTEE
261
The rule in regard to the levirate, or the assignment of widows to
another man to raise up sons for the deceased husband, is another instance
of the way in which the codes were assembled out of contradictory material.
In Manu, ix, 64-68, there is a flat contradiction of the preceding pro-
visions on this point. No remarriage and no assignment of widows are
permitted in a passage directly following the injunction that a widow shall
be so assigned, for the purpose of giving her dead husband a son to pay
him the funeral feast, etc.
These laws regarding women are on the whole the most self-
contradictory in the later codes. As the position of woman is more or less
indicative of the state of civilisation, it is important to notice that the high
regard paid to woman is confined to her function as a mother of sons,
The bride must be a virgin (not a widow, Manu, jx, 65) and the remarriage
of widows is generally not countenanced ; but the codes do not sanction
the custom of suttee till late, and the provisions for widows show that,
though they probably lived miserably and without honour, they were not
expected to die with their husbands. The Mabābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa
both recognise the custom of suttee, but only the former (and probably not
in an early part) gives a case of a royal widow burning herself with her
husband. It is perhaps the extension of a royal custom, as in the epic,
which has made the rule general, so that later law and practice recommend
suttee for all. A parallel would be the Self-choice (svayamvara) or election
of a husband by a princess, afterwards regarded as an election-rule in the
case of other maidens. The mother is praised as equal to the father in
honour, and in default of sons she may inherit (Manu, ix, 217) but if she
bear only daughters or has no children she may be divorced (ibid. 81)'. In
general, a woman receives respect only as potential or actual mother of
Manu repeats with unction the dictum of the Sūtras that a
is never independent (1x, 2 f. ), and says that she may be slain for unfaithful-
ness and divorced for barrenness; he also regards women as too 'unstable' to
be called as witnesses (v11, 77). The view that women are chattel is yielding
in the Çāstra to a more enlightened opinion. In the epics also the rigidity
of the law is not upheld by the tenor of tales showing women in a very
different light from that exhibited in the didactic parts of the epic. Even
at a much later age women were students, as they were wise in antiquity,
and the annals of the law itself testify to the ability of the sex, for in the
eighteenth century one of the great legal commentaries on the Mitāksharā
was written by a woman, Lakshmidevi. At what time the Purdah (“curtain')
rule came to confine women to the house is uncertain ; but probably not
1
1 The property of women forins too complicated a subject to be discussed here
but it may be said in general that Manu represents an advance on the older denial of the
Sūtras that women, and in particular widows, could inherit. Baudhāyana and Āpastamba
exclude widows from the husband's inheritance (e. g. Āpast. II, 14).
sons.
woman
## p. 262 (#296) ############################################
262
[ch.
GROWTH OF LAW AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
before foreign invasions bad compelled the Hindu to adopt it. The epics
and law-books speak of confining a woman as a punishment for ill-conduct
(e g. Manu, viii, 36. 5), but Manu insists that ‘no man can really guard
women by force' (1x, 10). To go veiled is only a court-custom alluded to in
both epics.
Deficient as are the legal text-books in arrangement and self-
contradictory as are their enactments, they form a priceless heritage of a
past which would otherwise have been largely lost to us, for they may be
accepted as reflecting real and not artificial or invented conditions of life.
Very material evidence has been furnished in the last few years as regards
the trustworthy character of the information given by authors of the law-
books. As remarked above concerning the Sūtras (v. sup. p. 198), the idea
that Brāhman tradition is manufactured in order to glorify the Brāhmans
and that in the time of Buddha there were no castes, is rendered inadmissi-
ble by the fact that all Hindu literature acknowledges the main facts as
stated in the epics and law-books. The fresh evidence on this point is
supplied by the text of the Arthaçāstra called the Kauțiliya, which may
date from about 300 B. C. and is in accord with the Sūtras and Çāstras in all
the chief points which these works have in common. This Arthaçāstra,
which forms the subject of Chapter xix in in this work, recognises castes and
mixed castes and agrees with the Çāstra of the law-givers in a multitude of
instances, showing that the scheme of law arranged by the Brāhmans was
neither ideal nor invented but based upon actual life? Here for example
! .
is repeated almost verbatim the rule against debts between father and son ;
the kinds of marriage are the same; the antithesis between Ārya and Çūdra
is maintained ; the rule that the wage is one-tenth the gain 'without
previous agreement' is identical with that of Yājñavalkya cited above, etc.
As the Kautiliya is a manual of rules imposed by a practical statesman, it
is impossible to suppose that the conditions it depicts are imaginary, yet the
same conditions are found in the Sūtras, etc. If it was indisputable that
this work belonged to the third or fourth century B. C. , it would be of the
utmost importance historically. As it is, some of the provisions of the
Kauțiliya agree with those of later rather than earlier law-books, and for the
present it is not advisable to accept all its rules as belonging to the time
assigned to the work as a whole2.
1 Cf. the articles of Prof. Jacobi in Sitz. K. P. A. , 1911, pp. 732, 954 f. ; 1912,
pp. 832 f. ; also the parallels published by Prof. Jolly in Z. D. M. G. , LXVII, pp. 49 f.
2 A sketch of law and government as presented by the Kuuțiliya Arthacāstra is
given by Dr. Barnett in his Antiquities of India, pp. 98 f. (1914); also by Mr. M. N. Law
in his Studies in Ancient Hindu Polity (1914).
## p. 263 (#297) ############################################
xn)
THE LAW BOOKS AND THE ARTHAÇĀST ARA
263
We see in the law-books the king of a limited realm still more or less
of a patriarch among his people'; a people divided into general orders
representing the military, priestly, and agricultural or mercantile classes,
still mingling freely with each other, intermarrying, but with due regard for
the respect paid to the higher orders, and utterly devoid of the 'caste' rules
later adopted in respect of food and marriage. The family is usually
monogamous though it may be polygamous, and there are traces of the
family-marriage, in which a wife marries a group of brothers. The menial
work of house-wife is carried on by slaves and half-breeds, who also do
most of the village labour and serve as petty craftsmen. More skilled
workers like chariot-makers are of almost Āryan rank and are not exclud.
ed from society. The laws are harsh and cruel as regards punishment
(the worker in gold who defrauds the king, for example, is, according to
Manu, ix, 292, 'to be chopped to pieces with knives”), but a regard for
truth and justice is the dominant trait of the law, which, if it may be
per-
sonified, has at times a naive air of blandly but perplexedly seeking to steer
a course between that which it thinks is right and ought to think is right,
because the one has been reasoned out and the other has been handed
down as part of 'revelation' or law divine”.
1 Thus the king has personally to go to market and ‘settle, the price of goods'
every five days (Manu, VIII, 402).
2 In his Lectures on the Ancient History of India (Calcutta, 1919), Prof. D. R.
Bhandarkar argues that the legal parts of the twelfth book of the epic revert to a period
earlier than Kautilya; and that the beginnings of Indian thought in the sphere of
Arthacāstra' are to be assigned to the seventh century B. C. The first thesis is based
on the theory that verse precedes prose in legal diction, which is certainly not demons-
trable. The second is only another way of saying that the subject-matter of the
Dharma Sūtras is probably older than their present form, and that Kautilya had num.
erous predecessors, which is probable. The chief discrepancy between Manu and Kau-
țilya is that the former represents a state conceived as a smaller kingdom ; the latter's
purview is not only more exhaustive but vider, e. g. , he discusses the ‘Arabian steeds' in
the king's stud (known to both epics) and cites as authorities later writers. On the
whole, as with the Jātakas, it would be well not to accept as undoubtedly of 'c. 400
B. C. , all the data of the Kauţılīya Arthacāstra.
## p. 264 (#298) ############################################
CHAPTER XIII
THE PURĀNAS
THE Purāņas, or collections of old-world' legends, contain the
‘
traditional genealogies of the principal ruling houses of the Middle Coun-
try. They are closely connected both in form and substance with the
epic and law-books. All three varieties of literature are written in the
same kind of verse and in the same kind of Sanskrit ; and they have
much of their subject matter in common. Not isolated verses merely but
long passages recur word for word in them all. They are all alike
inheritors of the same stock of legendary and traditional lore; and,
so far as the nature of their contents is concerned, it is not always
possible to draw any hard and fast line of distinction between them. Thus
from different points of view the Mahābhārata may be regarded, as
indeed it regards itself, as an epic, a law-book, or a Puraņa.
Any old-world story may in fact be called a Purāņa; but the term is
especially applied to certain works which, in conformity with the classical
definition, deal, or are supposed to deal, with the following five topics :
(1) Sarga, the evolution of the universe from its material cause :
(2) Pralisarga, the re-creation of the universe from the constituent elements
into which it is merged at the close of each aeon (kal pa) or day in the
life of the Creator, Brahmā ; (3) Vamça, the genealogies of gods and
rishis ; (4) Manvantara, the groups of 'great ages' (mahāyuga) included in
an aeon, in each of which mankind is supposed to be produced anew
from a first father, Manu ; (5) Vamçānucharita, the history of the royal
families who rule over the earth during the four 'ages' (yuga) which make
up one 'great age'.
With this ideal scheme none of the existing Purāņas is in complete
agreement. All differ from it in various degress by defect or by excess;
but, in spite of this, they profess generally to conform with the old
definition, and are thus made to give a description of themselves which is
no longer in accordance with the fact. It is evident, then, at the outset
that their original form has been modified. Only seven out of the eighteed
still retain the fifth section, which should contain account of
an
261
## p. 265 (#299) ############################################
CH, XIII ]
LITERATURE OF THE KSHATRIYAS
265
a
kings who have reigned during the historical period. For the purposes of
political history all the rest are therefore without value.
Orthodox Hinduism regards these works as of divine origin ; and
their framework is stereotyped in accordance with this view. The chief
speaker is some ancient seer who has received the tradition through
Vyāsa, who himself received it from the Creator. The narrative is
introduced by a dialogue between the chief speaker and his audience,
and is continued in the form of a series of reported dialogues between the
characters of the stories told.
Most commonly, though not invariably, the narrator is Lomaharshaņa
or his son, Ugraçravas. The former is called
The former is called “the Sūta,' and the
latter 'Sauti, or 'the Sūta's son'-titles which clearly indicate that
the traditional lore, out of which the Purāṇas have been fashioned,
was of Kshatriya, not of Brāhman, origin ; for the Sūtas, its custodians,
were a mixed caste who were entrusted with various important functions
in royal households. In the Brāhmaṇas the Sūta is the royal herald
and minstrel, and possibly also‘master of the horse. ' He is one of
the king's 'jewels' (ratnin) and ranks with the commander-in-chief of the
army and other high officers of state ; and in his character as herald he
was inviolable. In the law-books he is described as the son of a Kshatriya
by the daughter of a Brāhman. The Purāņas say that he was born
to sing the praises of princes and that he was entrusted with the care of the
historical and legendary traditions ; but they state definitely that he had no
concern with the Vedas (Vāyu Pur. , 1, 1, 26-28). In later times he
appears as the king's charioteer ; but he still retains his exalted rank,
and in the dramas he speaks Sanskrit - the sign of high birth or education
-while the inferior characters speak some Prākrit dialect.
In the interval between the Brāhmaṇas and the dramas the Sūta had
evidently been deprived of some of the most important of his ancient
functions ; and this change in his fortunes reflects a change which had taken
place in Indian society and in the character of the Purāņas. In the
heroic age, when the Sūta was the chronicler of kings, the Kshatriyas, as we
gather from the Upanishads and from early Jain and Buddhist literature,
occupied a position of considerable intellectual independence. But
this position was not maintained. In India, as in medieval Europe,
the priestly power eventually asserted its supremacy, and all the old
Kshatriya literature was Brāhmanised. The record of the lineage of
Princes tended to disappear from the Purāņas, and its place was taken by
endless legends about holy places, or hymns in praise of the divinities
who were worshipped there. The Purāṇas had passed from the Kshatriyas
to the Brāhmans, from the royal bards to the priests who waited on
temples and pilgrims' shrines - a class mentioned with
contempt in
the law-books (Manu, III, 152). But, in spite of this transference
and the radical changes which it involved, some of the old terms and some
## p. 266 (#300) ############################################
266
[ch.
THE PURĀNAS
fragments of the old literature still remained to testify to a state of
things which had passed away.
Thus the Purāņas, like the Mahābhārata, have undergone a
complete transformation. Just as the Mahābhārata, originally the story of
a war, has been made into a Dharma Çāstra, the main object of
which is to inculcate duty, so too the Purāņas are no longer
mere collections of ancient legends. Like the 'Lives of the Saints'
they have been applied to purposes of edification. For them the kings of
the earth have existed simply to point a moral – the vanity of human
wishes :
He who has heard of the races of the Sun and the Moon, of Ikshvāku, Janhu,
Mandhātři, Sagara, and Raghu, who have all perished; of Yayāti, Nahusha, and their
posterity, who are no more ; of kings of great might, resistless valour, and unbounded
wealth, who have been overcome by still more powerful Time, and are now only
a tale : he will learn wisdom, and forbear to call either children, or wife, or house, or
lands, or wealth, his own. (Vishnu Pur. , trans. Wilson, IV, p. 210. )
The chief object of the Purāņas is to glorify Çiva, or Vishņu, the great
divinities who, in their manifold forms share the allegiance of India.
They have become sectarian and propagandist, exalting their own particular
deity at the expense of all others. In a word, they have become the
scriptures of various forms of the later Hinduism, and bear to these the
same relation that the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas bore to the older Brāhmanism.
But while the scriptures of the ancient sacrificial religion have remained
unaltered and have been protected from textual corruption by the elaborate
devices of priestly schools, the Purāṇas have adapted themselves to
the changes which have taken place in the social and religious life of
the people, and their text has been perverted by generations of editors and
transcribers.
They are made up of elements old and new. However late they may
appear in their present form-and some of them are said to have
been altered in quite recent times – there can be no question that their main
source is to be traced back to a remote antiquity. The ancient lore
of the bards from which, like the epics, they are derived is known to
,
the Atharvaveda (xv, 6, 11 f. ) as a class of literature with the general title
Itihāsa-Purāņa 'story and legend'; and both in the Upanishads (Chhandogya,
VII, 1 and 7) and in early Buddhist books (Sutta Nipatā, iii, 7) this litera-
ture is called the fifth Veda. It was in fact the Veda of the laity; and as
such the epics and Purāṇas have been universally accepted all through the
classical period even down to the present day.
The attitude of modern scholarship towards these documents has
varied at different times. In the early days of the study of Sanskrit in
Europe they were accepted as historical. But it was soon evident that no
satisfactory system of Indian Chronology could be established by their aid
alone ; and for a long time scholars seem to have agreed to ignore their
## p. 267 (#301) ############################################
XIII )
MODERN SCHOLARSHIP
267
>
evidence unless when supported from other sources. After having been
unduly appraised, the Purāņas were unduly neglected. In recent years a
reaction has set in, and there is a growing belief that these works are
worthy of more serious attention than they have hitherto received. It has
been shown that the historical information which they convey is not so
untrustworthy as was formerly supposed. Dr. Vincent Smith, for example,
was able in 1902 (Z. D. M. G. , pp. 654, 658 ff. ) to prove that both the
dynastic lists of the Andhra kings and the duration of the different reigns
as stated in the Matsya Purāņa are substantially correct.
The critical study of the Purāņas, which was inaugurated by
Mr. Pargiter's Dynasties of the Kali Age (1913), is still in its infancy. When
this important branch of literature has been examined by the methods
which have been applied to the Vedas and Brāhmanas, there can be little
doubt that valuable historical results will be obtained. The Purāņas are
confessedly partly legendary and partly historical. The descriptions of
superhuman beings and of other worlds than this are glorified accounts of
the unknown founded on the analogy of the known. They find their
counterpart in that Christian Purāņa, Milton's Paradise Lost. The descrip-
tions of ancient monarchs and of their realms are essentially historica).
They may be compared to the Sagas and the medieval chronicles of
Europe. They are the products of an imaginative and uncritical age in
which men were not careful to distinguish fact from legend. It is the task
of modern criticism to disentangle the two elements. Its first object should
be to remove from the existing Purāṇas all later additions, and then from
a comparison of their oldest portions to determine the relations in which
they stand to one another, and thus, as far as possible, to restore their
common tradition to its original form.
As yet this necessary preliminary process has not even been begun ;
and until it is completed the real value of the Purāņas as historical evidence
cannot be estimated. They still continue to be dated by scholars according
to the latest indications which can be discovered in them, and they are too
often rejected as incompetent witnesses for the events of any early period.
The elementary fact that the date, whether of a building or of a literary
production, is not determined by its latest addition is in their case generally
ignored.
The eighteen Purāņas are associated with an equal number of
Upapurāņas. Traditional lists, in which all of these Purāṇas and
Upa purāņas are arranged in a definite order of precedence, have been pre-
served in the works themselves. In these the Brahmā Purāna stands first ;
and, as this position and its alternative title 'Adi' or 'the First' would alike
seem to indicate, it is probably the oldest. There would appear to be
nothing in its earlier portions to discountenance this claim ; but it has
received late additions, and on the evidence of these Wilson ascribed it to
>
## p. 268 (#302) ############################################
268
[Ch.
THE PURĀNAS
the thirteenth or fourteenth century. This affords a signal instance of the
misconception which may be caused by failure to discriminate between the
ages of different parts of a work. All the Purāņas without exception have
been altered. The Vishņu Pur. , which stands third in the list, has
apparently suffered less than the others.
Comparatively little is known about the Upapurāņas. Few of them
have been published or thoroughly investigated. They appear to be, as a
rule, still more narrowly sectarian than the Purāņas, and to be intended to
further religious interests which are more purely local. They probably have
little, if any, historical worth.
The total number of couplets comprised in the eighteen Purāņas as
given in the lists is 400,000, the length of the different versions varying
from 10,000 to about 81,000 couplets. These statements were no doubt
accurate at the time when the computation was made ; but great changes
have since taken place. On the one hand, whole sections have been lost.
The Vishnu Pur. , usually regarded as the best conserved of all, has now
less than 7,000 couplets : in the lists it appears with 23,000. On the
other hand, numerous more recent works claim to belong to one or other
of the Purāņas, so that it is now sometimes impossible to define the precise
limits of the latter. If all the productions which profess to form portions
of the Skanda Pur. , for instance, were included, the total given in the lists
would be greatly exceeded.
As to the history of these eighteen versions of a common tradition,
it seems certain that they were moulded into their present form at various
centres of religious activity. The case has been clearly stated by the late
Mr. A. M. T. Jackson in Centenary Volume of the Jour. of the Bombay
Branch of the R. A. S. (105), p. 73 :
A very striking analogy to the mutual relations of the various Purāņas is to be
found in the case of our own Saxon chronicle, which, as is well known, continued
to be written up in various monasteries down to the reiga of Stephen, though the
additions made after the Roman conquest were independent of each other. Similarly
the copies of the original verse Purāņa that were possessed by the priests of the
great centres of pilgrimage were altered and added to chiefly by the insertion of local
events after the fall of a central Hindu government had made communication between
the different groups of Brāhmans relatively difficult. In this way, the Brahmā Purāna
may represent the Orissa version of the original work, just as the Padma may give
that of Pushkara, the Agni that of Gayā, the Varāha that of Mathurā, the Vāmana
that of Thānesar, the Kūrma that of Benares, and the Matsya that of the Brhāmans on
the Narmadā.
At what period the eighteen Purāņas assumed their distinctive titles
is uncertain. It was no doubt long after they had ceased to be regarded as
repositories of historical information, for they are grouped in the
traditional lists entirely according to their religious character. It has
sometimes been supposed that one of their number is the immediate
source of all the others ; but it seems more probable that they belong to
## p. 269 (#303) ############################################
XIII ]
DIFFERENT VERSIONS AND AGE
269
several groups which represent different lines of tradition. Possibly
the Purāņas which are narrated by the Sūta may belong to one such group,
and those which are narrated by Maitreya to another. One at least of the
present titles may be traced back to an early period ; for the Bhavishya
;
or Bhavishyat Pur; the ninth in the list, is quoted in the Dharma Sūtra of
Āpastamba (II, 9, 24, 6) which cannot be later than the second century B. C.
and may possibly be still more ancient. But as a rule early references
to this traditional lore describe it generally as Purāņa or Itihāsa-Purāņa,
a class of literature which, as we have seen, undoubtly goes back at least
to the time of the Atharvaveda.
Some such antiquity is implicitly claimed by the Purāņas in their
prologues. Parāçara, whò narrates the Vishņu Pur. , is the grandson of
Vasishtha, the rishi of the seventh mandala of the Rigveda ; and his
narration takes place in the reign of Parikshit? who is celebrated as a king
of the Kurus in the Atharvaveda. Nearly all the other Puraņās are
attributed to the Sūta and to a period four generations later. Of the
prologues to these that of the Vāyu Pur, may be selected as typical. The
rishis are performing their twelve-year sacrifice in the Naimisha forest on the
bank of the sacred river Dșishadvati. To them comes the Sūta, the
custodian of the ancient Kshatriya traditions. At their request he takes
up bis parable and retells the legends entrusted to his care by Vyāsa. The
scene is laid in the reign of the Pūru king Adhisimakrishņa, who is
supposed to have lived before the beginning of the Kali Age, or, as we
should say, before the historical period. But the genealogy assigned to
him indicates a more definite date ; for of his immediate forbears -
Açvamedhadatta, Çatānika, Janamejaya, Parīkshit-all but the first, his
father Acvamedhadatta, are no doubt to be identified with kings of the
same names who appear in the Brāhmaṇas.
Whatever may be the historical value of these prologues, they certainly
carry us back to the same period, the period of the Atharvaveda and the
Brāhmaṇas, to which modern research has traced the existence of an
Itihāsa-Purāņa literature. To suppose that they are altogether concoctions
of the Middle Ages is to place too great a strain on our credulity. They
can scarcely have been reconstructed from the fragmentary evidence
supplied by Vedas and Brāhmaṇas at a period when no one could have
dreamed of treating Vedas and Brāhmaṇas as historical documents-a task
reserved for the nineteenth century. We cannot escape from the only
possible conclusion, that the Purāṇas have preserved, in however perverted
and distorted a form, an independent tradition, which supplements the
priestly tradition of the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, and which goes back to the
1 Chapter x, pp. 222-23 f.
2 The name appears as Parikshit in the earlier, and as Parikshit in the later,
literature,
## p. 270 (#304) ############################################
270
THE PURĀNAS
[ch.
same period. This tradition, as we way gather from the prologues, was
handed down from one generation of bards to another and was solemnly
promulgated on the occasion of great sacrifices.
The Kshatriya literature of the heroic age of India has for the most
part been lost.
Such of it as has survived has owed its preservation to its
association with religion. The commemoration of the lineage of kings
found a place in religious ceremonial, as, for instance, in the year-long
preparation for the ‘horse-sacrifice,' by the performance of which a king
ratified his claim to suzerainty over his neighbours. It is no doubt to such
commemorations that we owe the dynastic lists which have been preserved
in the Purāņas.
The historical character of these works is disguised by their setting.
They have been made to conform with Indian ideas as to the origin
and nature of the universe and its relation to a First Cause. The effect of
this has been to remove the monarch who is represented as reigning when
the recital takes place, and all his predecessors from the realm of history
into the realm of legend ; and it has been found necessary to preserve
the illusion throughout the subsequent narrative. The Sūta is invited by
the sacrificing rishis of the Naimisha forest to describe the Kali Age which
is still to come. It is evident that he can only do so prophetically. He can
only reproduce the foreknowledge which has been divinely implanted in
him by Vyāsa. Accordingly he uses the future tense in speaking of kings
who have actually reigned and of events which have actually happened.
History has been made to assume the disguise of prophecy.
When this pretence is set aside, and when all legendary or imaginary
elements are removed, the last two sections of the Purāņas afford valuable
,
information as to the geography and history of ancient India.
The fourth section, the manvantara, deals with the periods of the
different Manus. ' These form part of a chronological system which is
purely hypothetical. Time, like soul and matter, is a phrase of the Supreme
Spirit. As Brahmā wakes or sleeps, the universe wakes or sleeps also.
Each day and each night of Brahmā is an ‘aeon' (kalpa) and is equivalent
to a thousand 'great ages' (mahāyuga), that is to say, 1000 X 4,320,000
mortal years. During an 'aeon’ fourteen Manus or 'fathers of mankind'
appear, each presiding over a period of seventy-one 'great ages' with
a surplus. Each ‘great age' is further divided into four ‘ages' (yuga)
of progressive deterioration like the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages
of Greek and Roman mythology. These are named, from the numbers on
the dice, Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali, and are accordingly supposed to
last for periods represented by the proportion 4:3:2:1. We need not
follow this subdivision of time down to its ultimate fraction 'the twinkling
of an eye' (nimesha) or dwell on the sectarian zeal which leads some of the
## p. 271 (#305) ############################################
XII ]
THE MANUS
271
9
Purāṇas to assert that an 'aeon' of Brahmā is but ‘the twinkling of an eye'
in the endurance of Çiva or Vishņu.
The account of the manvantara of Manu Svāyambhuva, the first in
the series of fourteen, includes a description of the universe as it now exists
or is supposed to exist. The greater part of this description is, like the
chronology, imaginary. The world, according to this primitive geography,
consists of seven concentric continents separated by encircling seas.
These are the 'seas of treacle and seas of butter' at which Lord Macaulay,
with his utter inability to understand any form of early culture, scoffed in
his celebrated minute on Indian education. The innermost of these
continents, which-and here we come to actuality-is separated from
the next by salt water, is Jambudvīpa; and of Jambudvīpa the most
important region is Bharalavarsha or Bhārata, that is to say, the sub-
continent of India :
The country that lies north of the ocean, and south of the snowy mountains, is
Bhārata ; for there dwell the descendants of Bharata . . .
The seven main chains of mountains in Bhārata are Mahendra, Malaya, Sahya,
Çuktimat, Riksha, Vindhya, and Pāripātra. . .
On the east of Bhārata dwell the Kirātas (the barbarians); on the west, the
Yavanas; in the centre reside Brāhmans, Kshatriyas Vaiçyas, and Cūdras. (Vishņu
Pur. , trans, Wilson. II. pp. 127-9. )
General descriptions such as this are followed by lists, more or less
detailed, of the rivers which flow from the Himālayas and the seven
great ranges, and of the tribes inhabiting the various regions. As in all
early geography, the district is known by the plural of the tribal name.
Similar lists are found also in the Mahābhārata and elsewhere. This
extensive geographical literature gives a remarkably full account of the
whole sub-continent.
The geographical, like the dynastic, lists have evidently been brought
up to date from time to time, since foreign invaders of very different dates
appear in them. These seem to range from the Yavanas, Çakas, and
Pahlavas, who came into India in the second and first centuries B. C. , to the
Hūņas, who broke up the Gupta empire at the end of the fifth century A. D.
The fifth and last section of the Purāņas, the vamçānucharita,gives an
account of the kings of the earth, the descendants of Manu Vaivasvata, the
'son of the Sun. ' The narrative uses all three tenses, past, present, and
future ; for it recounts the kings who have been, the kings who are,
and the kings who are to be. The earliest of these genealogies, like
the most ancient chronicles of other peoples, are legendary. They trace
the descent of the rulers of this world from the Sun and Moon, and
through them from the Creator- a claim inherited and still maintained by
the Sūrajbansi and the Chandrabansi families of Rājput princes. Such
pedigrees have been pieced together from fragments of religious lore or
from fancied etymologies on to which old-world traditions and speculations
## p. 272 (#306) ############################################
272
THE PURĀNAS
[CH.
have been engrafted. Ilā, the daughter of Manu, from whom the Lunar
family is derived, personifies, as her name denotes, the sacrificial offering
made by Manu in the legend of the Flood (Çata Br. , 1, 8, 1, 11). Such
legendary characters are everywhere the result of man's early speculations
on the origin of the world. The first glimpses of authentic history only
appear when tribal names are inserted in the genealogies under the dis-
guise of eponymous ancestors. These, too, are the outcome of hypothesis,
but of hypothesis founded on facts. All the members of a tribe are pre-
sumably descended from a common ancestor, and related tribes are des-
cended from related ancestors. On these supposed individuals the names
of the tribes are conferred ; and they supply a sort of genealogical frame-
;
work which continues to be filled in by tradition until the age of records.
Once fashioned in this way such genealogies are accepted without question
until the period when critical scholarship arises and undertakes its first
duty, which is to discriminate between legend and fact in the story of
past ages.
In the Purāņas, which were the common scriptures of the ruling
Āryan peoples of Northern and Western India, the traditional genealogies
of the royal houses have been collected and made to form a consistent
whole. Not only are the ancient tribes of the Rigveda and the kingdoms
immediately descended from them represented here, but the realms of
Kosala (Ayodhyā), Videha, Vaicāli, and Magadha, which were not
Āryanised until a later date, have also been brought into the scheme and
furnished with a still longer and more august pedigree. They belong to
the Solar family and are derived directly from Manu through Ikshvāku.
A family of princes bearing this name is known from Vedic literature ;
and it is quite possible that the Solar dynasties of Kosala and other king-
doms to the east of the Middle Country may have been descended from
this family. If so, the Ikshvāku of the genealogical tree must be regarded
as an eponymous ancestor ; and as his superhuman origin had to be
explained, a myth founded on a far-fetched etymology of his name was
invented. Iksh vāku was so called because he was born from the sneeze
(kshava) of Manu (Vishnu Pur. trans. Wilson, il, p. 259).
Fragments of historical fact may no doubt be found embedded even
in the earliest list ; but these fragments have been carried down the stream
of time and deposited far away from their original home. Thus, for
instance, Purukutsa and his son Trasadasyu, who in the Rigveda are
Pūrus living on the Sarasvati, appear in the Purāņas among the Solar kings
of Kosala; Vadhryaçva, Divodāsa, Pijavana, and Sudās, who form a direct
line in the succession of Bharata princes ruling in the country between the
a
## p. 273 (#307) ############################################
XIII)
TRADITIONAL GENEALOGIES
273
>
case
Sarasvati and Dșishadvati appear in this order, but with intervening
reigns, among the kings of N. Pañchāla'.
It is probable that these
apparently conflicting statements are not really contradictory: the chain of
evidence which might bring the tradition of the Purāņas into substantial
agreement with the Rigveda has been broken.
But it is clear that documents of this kind can only be used with the
greatest caution. To some extent at least they have unquestionably been
fabricated in accordance with preconceived opinions. How these pedigrees
have been elaborated, even at a comparatively late date, by court poets
who sought to magnify the ancient lineage of their lord, may sometimes
be seen at a glance. For example, in the genealogy of the Ikshvākus of
Kosala the immediate predecessors of Prasenajit, the contemporary of
Buddha, are Çākya, Çuddhodana, Siddhārtha and Rāhula. That is to say,
the eponymous hero of Buddha's clan, Buddha's father, Buddha himself,
and his son have all been incorporated in the dynastic list of the kings of
Kosala.
It seems impossible to bring the Purāņic genealogies into any satis-
factory relation with the Vedic literature or with one another until we
approach the period at which they profess to have been recited, that is to
say, the reign of Parikshit in the case of the Vishņu Pur, and the reign of
Adhisimakrishna in the of most of the others. Then certain
synchronisms seem to afford a more secure chronological standpoint.
Parikshit is celebrated as a king of the Kurus in the last and latest book
of the Atharva veda : according to the epic, as usually interpreted, he was
appointed king of Hastinā pura more than thirty-six years after the great
war between the Kurus and Pāņdus. Adhisimakrishna, the great great
grandson of Parikshit is represented by the Purāṇas as contemporary with
Divākara of Kosala and Senājit of Magadha. Between the last mentioned
and his predecessor Sahadeva, who was killed in the great war, six reigns
intervene. The length of each reign and the total duration of the different
dynasties of Magadha are given in some versions. Unfortunately the
state of the text is so corrupt and the numbers are 80 discrepant that
this evidence is generally of no value. Leaving out of account an impossi-
ble reading which attributes a reign of one hundred years to Nirāmitra,
the mss. as they stand give a maximum of 289 and a minimum of 259
years to the six reigns which separate the great war from Senājit of
Magadha ; and even the lesser of these estimates would seem to be
excessive. We must be content with the general conclusion that the tradi-
tion of the Purāņas, according to the dynastic lists of Hastināpura and
Magadha, places the great war early in what we know as the Brāhmana
period, say about 1000 B. C.
Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1910, p. 28.
:See Pargiter, Dynasties of the Kali Age, pp. 11, 67.
## p. 274 (#308) ############################################
274
[ci.
THE PURĀNAS
were
That the war between the Kurus and Pāņdus is historical and that it
took place in ancient times cannot be doubted, however much its story has
been overloaded with legend, and however late may be the form in which
it has been handed down. The legend of the war of the Mahābhārata
in India finds its exact parallel in the legend of the Trojan war in Europe.
Each became the great central point to which the nations of the Middle
Ages referred their history. To have shared ancestrally in the fame
of Kurukshetra or of Troy was for the nations the patent of nobility
and ancient descent. The remotest peopies of Eastern and Southern
India and the late invaders of the North-West alike claim a place in the
story of the Mahābhārata, even as the royal houses of Western Europe
traced their origin to Trojan heroes. Until the close of the sixteenth
century no historian of France or Britain doubted that the kings of these
countries were descended from the Trojan Francus or Brutus, both of whom
were in reality eponymous heroes like Yadu and his brothers in the
Purāṇas. Milton in his History of England (1670) repeats the story of Brutus
at length and in detail ; but a chance phrase - 'they who first devis'd
to bring us from some noble ancestor'-shows that historians
beginning to recognise the origin of such legends. And so far as the
Mahābhārata associates most of the nations of India with the great war it
has been devis'd' in the same manner and for the same purpose. A
nucleus of fact has been encrusted with the legendary accretions of ages.
After the great war detailed dynastic tables continue to be given in
the case of the three royal lines only - the Pūrus, the Ikshvākus, and the
kings of Magadha. Other kingdoms are mentioned summarily with a bare
statement of the number of contemporary reigns. The Purānic history is
thus, professedly though not actually (pp. 277, 284), cenfned in its later
stages to the regions now represented by the United Provinces and S. Bihār.
In the Pūrus or Pauravas of the Purāņas the Bharatas of the Rigveda
and the Kurus of the Brāhmaṇas have been merged. In the Rigveda both
the Pūrus and the Bharatas live in the land of the Sarasvati (Brahmăvarta
or Sarhind). But already the Ārva occupation of Kurukshetra, the
adjacent country of the upper Jumar and Ganges on the south-east, was
beginning; for a victory on the Jumna gained by Sudās, king of the
Tșitsus, over a native leader called Bheda is referred to in vii, 18, 19. In
the Purāṇas, Sudas and his family appear in the list of the kings of
N. Pañchāla to the east of Kurukshetra. That is to say, the later kings of
N.
one another either by implication or directly, not only the laws in general
but those of the same code and even the laws placed in juxtaposition.
An example of such contradiction is what may be found in Manu's code
respecting the sale of a daughter. In vill, 204, 'Manu declares' that if one
girl has been shown to a prospective bridegroom and another is given,
he may marry them both for the same price. In iii, 51 the same code
1 Apparently a murderer might expiate his crime by dying for the king in battle
(Apastamba, 1,24. 21), and even, “if he fights three times, when not slain, he is freed'
(Vas. , Dh. C. , XX, 28). This antique provision is not preserved in the later law.
9
## p. 260 (#294) ############################################
260
(CH.
GROWTH OF LAW AND LEGAL INSTITUTIOVS
we
a
a
a
(presumably the same Manu) says 'Let no wise father take even a small
price for his daughter. . . for small or great this would be a sale, ; and
finally in ix, 97,
read :
'If the giver of the price die after the
price for a girl has been paid, she shall be given to the (bridegroom's)
brother if she is willing,' and immediately after (1x, 98), 'Even a slave
should no! accept a price in exchange for his daughter,' with a couple
of verses following in the tone of the passage above, repudiating the 'sale
of a daughter. ' Yet in viii, 366, under the head of the fifteenth title
of law, it is stated that a low-caste man courting a woman of the highest
caste deserves death (or corporal punishment) ; but one who courts
an equal shall ‘pay the price' (and take her) if her father consents. It
was an old provision that a fee or price (a yoke of oxen) should be paid to
the father, and though, this was softened down to a 'fee' or 'tax' (çulka),
yet the advanced code objects formally to this business transaction. At
the same time the old provision is retained, because it was
a part of
hereditary traditional law. In the epic also, the rule against selling a
daughter is recorded ; but so strong is the feeling against violating family-
law that the man who purposes to sell his daughter, because it is the
custom in my family,' is upheld in doing so by a saint, who even declares
that the sale is justified by the ancients and by God (Mbh. , I, 113, 9 f. ).
Here the girl is bought with gold and elephants and other costly things.
On the other hand, as a matter of dignity, the father of an aristocratic girl,
more particularly a princess, bas in effect heavy expenses. Thus when
king Virāța weds his daughter he bestows upon his son-in-law
thousand horses and two hundred elephants (Mbh, iv, 72, 36). The didactic
epic says that a man who sells his daughter goes to hell (XIII, 45, 18); there
is a general Sūtra rule against selling any human being (Gaut. , VII, 14. )
In regard to infant marriages the Sūtras generally admit the
advisability of marrying a girl when she is still too young to wear clothes,
that is, before she becomes adult, or shows signs of maturity. This latter
law and practice are all at variance on this point. One of the epic heroes
marries at sixteen a princess still playing with her dolls but old enough
to become a mother shortly afterwards. The epic rule is that a bride-
groom of thirty should marry a girl of ten, a bridegroom of twenty-one a
girl of seven (XIII, 44, 14). Arrian (23, 9) reports that Indian girls were
married at seven. Sītā is said to have married Rāma at six ! The rule of
Manu is that a bridegroom of thirty shall marry a girl of twelve, one of
twenty-four, a girl of eight (1x, 94) ; he also recommends that a girl shall not
marry at all unless a suitable bridgroom appear ; but again he countenances
infant-marriages (1X, 88 and 89).
1 The purchase of a wife is the 'demoniac' form of marriage formally permitted
in the case of a Vaicya and slave (Manu. III, 24). These two classes ‘are not particular
about wives' Baudh. , Dh. S. , I, 11, 20, 14).
seven
>
a
## p. 261 (#295) ############################################
XII]
MARRIAGE : SUTTEE
261
The rule in regard to the levirate, or the assignment of widows to
another man to raise up sons for the deceased husband, is another instance
of the way in which the codes were assembled out of contradictory material.
In Manu, ix, 64-68, there is a flat contradiction of the preceding pro-
visions on this point. No remarriage and no assignment of widows are
permitted in a passage directly following the injunction that a widow shall
be so assigned, for the purpose of giving her dead husband a son to pay
him the funeral feast, etc.
These laws regarding women are on the whole the most self-
contradictory in the later codes. As the position of woman is more or less
indicative of the state of civilisation, it is important to notice that the high
regard paid to woman is confined to her function as a mother of sons,
The bride must be a virgin (not a widow, Manu, jx, 65) and the remarriage
of widows is generally not countenanced ; but the codes do not sanction
the custom of suttee till late, and the provisions for widows show that,
though they probably lived miserably and without honour, they were not
expected to die with their husbands. The Mabābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa
both recognise the custom of suttee, but only the former (and probably not
in an early part) gives a case of a royal widow burning herself with her
husband. It is perhaps the extension of a royal custom, as in the epic,
which has made the rule general, so that later law and practice recommend
suttee for all. A parallel would be the Self-choice (svayamvara) or election
of a husband by a princess, afterwards regarded as an election-rule in the
case of other maidens. The mother is praised as equal to the father in
honour, and in default of sons she may inherit (Manu, ix, 217) but if she
bear only daughters or has no children she may be divorced (ibid. 81)'. In
general, a woman receives respect only as potential or actual mother of
Manu repeats with unction the dictum of the Sūtras that a
is never independent (1x, 2 f. ), and says that she may be slain for unfaithful-
ness and divorced for barrenness; he also regards women as too 'unstable' to
be called as witnesses (v11, 77). The view that women are chattel is yielding
in the Çāstra to a more enlightened opinion. In the epics also the rigidity
of the law is not upheld by the tenor of tales showing women in a very
different light from that exhibited in the didactic parts of the epic. Even
at a much later age women were students, as they were wise in antiquity,
and the annals of the law itself testify to the ability of the sex, for in the
eighteenth century one of the great legal commentaries on the Mitāksharā
was written by a woman, Lakshmidevi. At what time the Purdah (“curtain')
rule came to confine women to the house is uncertain ; but probably not
1
1 The property of women forins too complicated a subject to be discussed here
but it may be said in general that Manu represents an advance on the older denial of the
Sūtras that women, and in particular widows, could inherit. Baudhāyana and Āpastamba
exclude widows from the husband's inheritance (e. g. Āpast. II, 14).
sons.
woman
## p. 262 (#296) ############################################
262
[ch.
GROWTH OF LAW AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
before foreign invasions bad compelled the Hindu to adopt it. The epics
and law-books speak of confining a woman as a punishment for ill-conduct
(e g. Manu, viii, 36. 5), but Manu insists that ‘no man can really guard
women by force' (1x, 10). To go veiled is only a court-custom alluded to in
both epics.
Deficient as are the legal text-books in arrangement and self-
contradictory as are their enactments, they form a priceless heritage of a
past which would otherwise have been largely lost to us, for they may be
accepted as reflecting real and not artificial or invented conditions of life.
Very material evidence has been furnished in the last few years as regards
the trustworthy character of the information given by authors of the law-
books. As remarked above concerning the Sūtras (v. sup. p. 198), the idea
that Brāhman tradition is manufactured in order to glorify the Brāhmans
and that in the time of Buddha there were no castes, is rendered inadmissi-
ble by the fact that all Hindu literature acknowledges the main facts as
stated in the epics and law-books. The fresh evidence on this point is
supplied by the text of the Arthaçāstra called the Kauțiliya, which may
date from about 300 B. C. and is in accord with the Sūtras and Çāstras in all
the chief points which these works have in common. This Arthaçāstra,
which forms the subject of Chapter xix in in this work, recognises castes and
mixed castes and agrees with the Çāstra of the law-givers in a multitude of
instances, showing that the scheme of law arranged by the Brāhmans was
neither ideal nor invented but based upon actual life? Here for example
! .
is repeated almost verbatim the rule against debts between father and son ;
the kinds of marriage are the same; the antithesis between Ārya and Çūdra
is maintained ; the rule that the wage is one-tenth the gain 'without
previous agreement' is identical with that of Yājñavalkya cited above, etc.
As the Kautiliya is a manual of rules imposed by a practical statesman, it
is impossible to suppose that the conditions it depicts are imaginary, yet the
same conditions are found in the Sūtras, etc. If it was indisputable that
this work belonged to the third or fourth century B. C. , it would be of the
utmost importance historically. As it is, some of the provisions of the
Kauțiliya agree with those of later rather than earlier law-books, and for the
present it is not advisable to accept all its rules as belonging to the time
assigned to the work as a whole2.
1 Cf. the articles of Prof. Jacobi in Sitz. K. P. A. , 1911, pp. 732, 954 f. ; 1912,
pp. 832 f. ; also the parallels published by Prof. Jolly in Z. D. M. G. , LXVII, pp. 49 f.
2 A sketch of law and government as presented by the Kuuțiliya Arthacāstra is
given by Dr. Barnett in his Antiquities of India, pp. 98 f. (1914); also by Mr. M. N. Law
in his Studies in Ancient Hindu Polity (1914).
## p. 263 (#297) ############################################
xn)
THE LAW BOOKS AND THE ARTHAÇĀST ARA
263
We see in the law-books the king of a limited realm still more or less
of a patriarch among his people'; a people divided into general orders
representing the military, priestly, and agricultural or mercantile classes,
still mingling freely with each other, intermarrying, but with due regard for
the respect paid to the higher orders, and utterly devoid of the 'caste' rules
later adopted in respect of food and marriage. The family is usually
monogamous though it may be polygamous, and there are traces of the
family-marriage, in which a wife marries a group of brothers. The menial
work of house-wife is carried on by slaves and half-breeds, who also do
most of the village labour and serve as petty craftsmen. More skilled
workers like chariot-makers are of almost Āryan rank and are not exclud.
ed from society. The laws are harsh and cruel as regards punishment
(the worker in gold who defrauds the king, for example, is, according to
Manu, ix, 292, 'to be chopped to pieces with knives”), but a regard for
truth and justice is the dominant trait of the law, which, if it may be
per-
sonified, has at times a naive air of blandly but perplexedly seeking to steer
a course between that which it thinks is right and ought to think is right,
because the one has been reasoned out and the other has been handed
down as part of 'revelation' or law divine”.
1 Thus the king has personally to go to market and ‘settle, the price of goods'
every five days (Manu, VIII, 402).
2 In his Lectures on the Ancient History of India (Calcutta, 1919), Prof. D. R.
Bhandarkar argues that the legal parts of the twelfth book of the epic revert to a period
earlier than Kautilya; and that the beginnings of Indian thought in the sphere of
Arthacāstra' are to be assigned to the seventh century B. C. The first thesis is based
on the theory that verse precedes prose in legal diction, which is certainly not demons-
trable. The second is only another way of saying that the subject-matter of the
Dharma Sūtras is probably older than their present form, and that Kautilya had num.
erous predecessors, which is probable. The chief discrepancy between Manu and Kau-
țilya is that the former represents a state conceived as a smaller kingdom ; the latter's
purview is not only more exhaustive but vider, e. g. , he discusses the ‘Arabian steeds' in
the king's stud (known to both epics) and cites as authorities later writers. On the
whole, as with the Jātakas, it would be well not to accept as undoubtedly of 'c. 400
B. C. , all the data of the Kauţılīya Arthacāstra.
## p. 264 (#298) ############################################
CHAPTER XIII
THE PURĀNAS
THE Purāņas, or collections of old-world' legends, contain the
‘
traditional genealogies of the principal ruling houses of the Middle Coun-
try. They are closely connected both in form and substance with the
epic and law-books. All three varieties of literature are written in the
same kind of verse and in the same kind of Sanskrit ; and they have
much of their subject matter in common. Not isolated verses merely but
long passages recur word for word in them all. They are all alike
inheritors of the same stock of legendary and traditional lore; and,
so far as the nature of their contents is concerned, it is not always
possible to draw any hard and fast line of distinction between them. Thus
from different points of view the Mahābhārata may be regarded, as
indeed it regards itself, as an epic, a law-book, or a Puraņa.
Any old-world story may in fact be called a Purāņa; but the term is
especially applied to certain works which, in conformity with the classical
definition, deal, or are supposed to deal, with the following five topics :
(1) Sarga, the evolution of the universe from its material cause :
(2) Pralisarga, the re-creation of the universe from the constituent elements
into which it is merged at the close of each aeon (kal pa) or day in the
life of the Creator, Brahmā ; (3) Vamça, the genealogies of gods and
rishis ; (4) Manvantara, the groups of 'great ages' (mahāyuga) included in
an aeon, in each of which mankind is supposed to be produced anew
from a first father, Manu ; (5) Vamçānucharita, the history of the royal
families who rule over the earth during the four 'ages' (yuga) which make
up one 'great age'.
With this ideal scheme none of the existing Purāņas is in complete
agreement. All differ from it in various degress by defect or by excess;
but, in spite of this, they profess generally to conform with the old
definition, and are thus made to give a description of themselves which is
no longer in accordance with the fact. It is evident, then, at the outset
that their original form has been modified. Only seven out of the eighteed
still retain the fifth section, which should contain account of
an
261
## p. 265 (#299) ############################################
CH, XIII ]
LITERATURE OF THE KSHATRIYAS
265
a
kings who have reigned during the historical period. For the purposes of
political history all the rest are therefore without value.
Orthodox Hinduism regards these works as of divine origin ; and
their framework is stereotyped in accordance with this view. The chief
speaker is some ancient seer who has received the tradition through
Vyāsa, who himself received it from the Creator. The narrative is
introduced by a dialogue between the chief speaker and his audience,
and is continued in the form of a series of reported dialogues between the
characters of the stories told.
Most commonly, though not invariably, the narrator is Lomaharshaņa
or his son, Ugraçravas. The former is called
The former is called “the Sūta,' and the
latter 'Sauti, or 'the Sūta's son'-titles which clearly indicate that
the traditional lore, out of which the Purāṇas have been fashioned,
was of Kshatriya, not of Brāhman, origin ; for the Sūtas, its custodians,
were a mixed caste who were entrusted with various important functions
in royal households. In the Brāhmaṇas the Sūta is the royal herald
and minstrel, and possibly also‘master of the horse. ' He is one of
the king's 'jewels' (ratnin) and ranks with the commander-in-chief of the
army and other high officers of state ; and in his character as herald he
was inviolable. In the law-books he is described as the son of a Kshatriya
by the daughter of a Brāhman. The Purāņas say that he was born
to sing the praises of princes and that he was entrusted with the care of the
historical and legendary traditions ; but they state definitely that he had no
concern with the Vedas (Vāyu Pur. , 1, 1, 26-28). In later times he
appears as the king's charioteer ; but he still retains his exalted rank,
and in the dramas he speaks Sanskrit - the sign of high birth or education
-while the inferior characters speak some Prākrit dialect.
In the interval between the Brāhmaṇas and the dramas the Sūta had
evidently been deprived of some of the most important of his ancient
functions ; and this change in his fortunes reflects a change which had taken
place in Indian society and in the character of the Purāņas. In the
heroic age, when the Sūta was the chronicler of kings, the Kshatriyas, as we
gather from the Upanishads and from early Jain and Buddhist literature,
occupied a position of considerable intellectual independence. But
this position was not maintained. In India, as in medieval Europe,
the priestly power eventually asserted its supremacy, and all the old
Kshatriya literature was Brāhmanised. The record of the lineage of
Princes tended to disappear from the Purāņas, and its place was taken by
endless legends about holy places, or hymns in praise of the divinities
who were worshipped there. The Purāṇas had passed from the Kshatriyas
to the Brāhmans, from the royal bards to the priests who waited on
temples and pilgrims' shrines - a class mentioned with
contempt in
the law-books (Manu, III, 152). But, in spite of this transference
and the radical changes which it involved, some of the old terms and some
## p. 266 (#300) ############################################
266
[ch.
THE PURĀNAS
fragments of the old literature still remained to testify to a state of
things which had passed away.
Thus the Purāņas, like the Mahābhārata, have undergone a
complete transformation. Just as the Mahābhārata, originally the story of
a war, has been made into a Dharma Çāstra, the main object of
which is to inculcate duty, so too the Purāņas are no longer
mere collections of ancient legends. Like the 'Lives of the Saints'
they have been applied to purposes of edification. For them the kings of
the earth have existed simply to point a moral – the vanity of human
wishes :
He who has heard of the races of the Sun and the Moon, of Ikshvāku, Janhu,
Mandhātři, Sagara, and Raghu, who have all perished; of Yayāti, Nahusha, and their
posterity, who are no more ; of kings of great might, resistless valour, and unbounded
wealth, who have been overcome by still more powerful Time, and are now only
a tale : he will learn wisdom, and forbear to call either children, or wife, or house, or
lands, or wealth, his own. (Vishnu Pur. , trans. Wilson, IV, p. 210. )
The chief object of the Purāņas is to glorify Çiva, or Vishņu, the great
divinities who, in their manifold forms share the allegiance of India.
They have become sectarian and propagandist, exalting their own particular
deity at the expense of all others. In a word, they have become the
scriptures of various forms of the later Hinduism, and bear to these the
same relation that the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas bore to the older Brāhmanism.
But while the scriptures of the ancient sacrificial religion have remained
unaltered and have been protected from textual corruption by the elaborate
devices of priestly schools, the Purāṇas have adapted themselves to
the changes which have taken place in the social and religious life of
the people, and their text has been perverted by generations of editors and
transcribers.
They are made up of elements old and new. However late they may
appear in their present form-and some of them are said to have
been altered in quite recent times – there can be no question that their main
source is to be traced back to a remote antiquity. The ancient lore
of the bards from which, like the epics, they are derived is known to
,
the Atharvaveda (xv, 6, 11 f. ) as a class of literature with the general title
Itihāsa-Purāņa 'story and legend'; and both in the Upanishads (Chhandogya,
VII, 1 and 7) and in early Buddhist books (Sutta Nipatā, iii, 7) this litera-
ture is called the fifth Veda. It was in fact the Veda of the laity; and as
such the epics and Purāṇas have been universally accepted all through the
classical period even down to the present day.
The attitude of modern scholarship towards these documents has
varied at different times. In the early days of the study of Sanskrit in
Europe they were accepted as historical. But it was soon evident that no
satisfactory system of Indian Chronology could be established by their aid
alone ; and for a long time scholars seem to have agreed to ignore their
## p. 267 (#301) ############################################
XIII )
MODERN SCHOLARSHIP
267
>
evidence unless when supported from other sources. After having been
unduly appraised, the Purāņas were unduly neglected. In recent years a
reaction has set in, and there is a growing belief that these works are
worthy of more serious attention than they have hitherto received. It has
been shown that the historical information which they convey is not so
untrustworthy as was formerly supposed. Dr. Vincent Smith, for example,
was able in 1902 (Z. D. M. G. , pp. 654, 658 ff. ) to prove that both the
dynastic lists of the Andhra kings and the duration of the different reigns
as stated in the Matsya Purāņa are substantially correct.
The critical study of the Purāņas, which was inaugurated by
Mr. Pargiter's Dynasties of the Kali Age (1913), is still in its infancy. When
this important branch of literature has been examined by the methods
which have been applied to the Vedas and Brāhmanas, there can be little
doubt that valuable historical results will be obtained. The Purāņas are
confessedly partly legendary and partly historical. The descriptions of
superhuman beings and of other worlds than this are glorified accounts of
the unknown founded on the analogy of the known. They find their
counterpart in that Christian Purāņa, Milton's Paradise Lost. The descrip-
tions of ancient monarchs and of their realms are essentially historica).
They may be compared to the Sagas and the medieval chronicles of
Europe. They are the products of an imaginative and uncritical age in
which men were not careful to distinguish fact from legend. It is the task
of modern criticism to disentangle the two elements. Its first object should
be to remove from the existing Purāṇas all later additions, and then from
a comparison of their oldest portions to determine the relations in which
they stand to one another, and thus, as far as possible, to restore their
common tradition to its original form.
As yet this necessary preliminary process has not even been begun ;
and until it is completed the real value of the Purāņas as historical evidence
cannot be estimated. They still continue to be dated by scholars according
to the latest indications which can be discovered in them, and they are too
often rejected as incompetent witnesses for the events of any early period.
The elementary fact that the date, whether of a building or of a literary
production, is not determined by its latest addition is in their case generally
ignored.
The eighteen Purāņas are associated with an equal number of
Upapurāņas. Traditional lists, in which all of these Purāṇas and
Upa purāņas are arranged in a definite order of precedence, have been pre-
served in the works themselves. In these the Brahmā Purāna stands first ;
and, as this position and its alternative title 'Adi' or 'the First' would alike
seem to indicate, it is probably the oldest. There would appear to be
nothing in its earlier portions to discountenance this claim ; but it has
received late additions, and on the evidence of these Wilson ascribed it to
>
## p. 268 (#302) ############################################
268
[Ch.
THE PURĀNAS
the thirteenth or fourteenth century. This affords a signal instance of the
misconception which may be caused by failure to discriminate between the
ages of different parts of a work. All the Purāņas without exception have
been altered. The Vishņu Pur. , which stands third in the list, has
apparently suffered less than the others.
Comparatively little is known about the Upapurāņas. Few of them
have been published or thoroughly investigated. They appear to be, as a
rule, still more narrowly sectarian than the Purāņas, and to be intended to
further religious interests which are more purely local. They probably have
little, if any, historical worth.
The total number of couplets comprised in the eighteen Purāņas as
given in the lists is 400,000, the length of the different versions varying
from 10,000 to about 81,000 couplets. These statements were no doubt
accurate at the time when the computation was made ; but great changes
have since taken place. On the one hand, whole sections have been lost.
The Vishnu Pur. , usually regarded as the best conserved of all, has now
less than 7,000 couplets : in the lists it appears with 23,000. On the
other hand, numerous more recent works claim to belong to one or other
of the Purāņas, so that it is now sometimes impossible to define the precise
limits of the latter. If all the productions which profess to form portions
of the Skanda Pur. , for instance, were included, the total given in the lists
would be greatly exceeded.
As to the history of these eighteen versions of a common tradition,
it seems certain that they were moulded into their present form at various
centres of religious activity. The case has been clearly stated by the late
Mr. A. M. T. Jackson in Centenary Volume of the Jour. of the Bombay
Branch of the R. A. S. (105), p. 73 :
A very striking analogy to the mutual relations of the various Purāņas is to be
found in the case of our own Saxon chronicle, which, as is well known, continued
to be written up in various monasteries down to the reiga of Stephen, though the
additions made after the Roman conquest were independent of each other. Similarly
the copies of the original verse Purāņa that were possessed by the priests of the
great centres of pilgrimage were altered and added to chiefly by the insertion of local
events after the fall of a central Hindu government had made communication between
the different groups of Brāhmans relatively difficult. In this way, the Brahmā Purāna
may represent the Orissa version of the original work, just as the Padma may give
that of Pushkara, the Agni that of Gayā, the Varāha that of Mathurā, the Vāmana
that of Thānesar, the Kūrma that of Benares, and the Matsya that of the Brhāmans on
the Narmadā.
At what period the eighteen Purāņas assumed their distinctive titles
is uncertain. It was no doubt long after they had ceased to be regarded as
repositories of historical information, for they are grouped in the
traditional lists entirely according to their religious character. It has
sometimes been supposed that one of their number is the immediate
source of all the others ; but it seems more probable that they belong to
## p. 269 (#303) ############################################
XIII ]
DIFFERENT VERSIONS AND AGE
269
several groups which represent different lines of tradition. Possibly
the Purāņas which are narrated by the Sūta may belong to one such group,
and those which are narrated by Maitreya to another. One at least of the
present titles may be traced back to an early period ; for the Bhavishya
;
or Bhavishyat Pur; the ninth in the list, is quoted in the Dharma Sūtra of
Āpastamba (II, 9, 24, 6) which cannot be later than the second century B. C.
and may possibly be still more ancient. But as a rule early references
to this traditional lore describe it generally as Purāņa or Itihāsa-Purāņa,
a class of literature which, as we have seen, undoubtly goes back at least
to the time of the Atharvaveda.
Some such antiquity is implicitly claimed by the Purāņas in their
prologues. Parāçara, whò narrates the Vishņu Pur. , is the grandson of
Vasishtha, the rishi of the seventh mandala of the Rigveda ; and his
narration takes place in the reign of Parikshit? who is celebrated as a king
of the Kurus in the Atharvaveda. Nearly all the other Puraņās are
attributed to the Sūta and to a period four generations later. Of the
prologues to these that of the Vāyu Pur, may be selected as typical. The
rishis are performing their twelve-year sacrifice in the Naimisha forest on the
bank of the sacred river Dșishadvati. To them comes the Sūta, the
custodian of the ancient Kshatriya traditions. At their request he takes
up bis parable and retells the legends entrusted to his care by Vyāsa. The
scene is laid in the reign of the Pūru king Adhisimakrishņa, who is
supposed to have lived before the beginning of the Kali Age, or, as we
should say, before the historical period. But the genealogy assigned to
him indicates a more definite date ; for of his immediate forbears -
Açvamedhadatta, Çatānika, Janamejaya, Parīkshit-all but the first, his
father Acvamedhadatta, are no doubt to be identified with kings of the
same names who appear in the Brāhmaṇas.
Whatever may be the historical value of these prologues, they certainly
carry us back to the same period, the period of the Atharvaveda and the
Brāhmaṇas, to which modern research has traced the existence of an
Itihāsa-Purāņa literature. To suppose that they are altogether concoctions
of the Middle Ages is to place too great a strain on our credulity. They
can scarcely have been reconstructed from the fragmentary evidence
supplied by Vedas and Brāhmaṇas at a period when no one could have
dreamed of treating Vedas and Brāhmaṇas as historical documents-a task
reserved for the nineteenth century. We cannot escape from the only
possible conclusion, that the Purāṇas have preserved, in however perverted
and distorted a form, an independent tradition, which supplements the
priestly tradition of the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, and which goes back to the
1 Chapter x, pp. 222-23 f.
2 The name appears as Parikshit in the earlier, and as Parikshit in the later,
literature,
## p. 270 (#304) ############################################
270
THE PURĀNAS
[ch.
same period. This tradition, as we way gather from the prologues, was
handed down from one generation of bards to another and was solemnly
promulgated on the occasion of great sacrifices.
The Kshatriya literature of the heroic age of India has for the most
part been lost.
Such of it as has survived has owed its preservation to its
association with religion. The commemoration of the lineage of kings
found a place in religious ceremonial, as, for instance, in the year-long
preparation for the ‘horse-sacrifice,' by the performance of which a king
ratified his claim to suzerainty over his neighbours. It is no doubt to such
commemorations that we owe the dynastic lists which have been preserved
in the Purāņas.
The historical character of these works is disguised by their setting.
They have been made to conform with Indian ideas as to the origin
and nature of the universe and its relation to a First Cause. The effect of
this has been to remove the monarch who is represented as reigning when
the recital takes place, and all his predecessors from the realm of history
into the realm of legend ; and it has been found necessary to preserve
the illusion throughout the subsequent narrative. The Sūta is invited by
the sacrificing rishis of the Naimisha forest to describe the Kali Age which
is still to come. It is evident that he can only do so prophetically. He can
only reproduce the foreknowledge which has been divinely implanted in
him by Vyāsa. Accordingly he uses the future tense in speaking of kings
who have actually reigned and of events which have actually happened.
History has been made to assume the disguise of prophecy.
When this pretence is set aside, and when all legendary or imaginary
elements are removed, the last two sections of the Purāņas afford valuable
,
information as to the geography and history of ancient India.
The fourth section, the manvantara, deals with the periods of the
different Manus. ' These form part of a chronological system which is
purely hypothetical. Time, like soul and matter, is a phrase of the Supreme
Spirit. As Brahmā wakes or sleeps, the universe wakes or sleeps also.
Each day and each night of Brahmā is an ‘aeon' (kalpa) and is equivalent
to a thousand 'great ages' (mahāyuga), that is to say, 1000 X 4,320,000
mortal years. During an 'aeon’ fourteen Manus or 'fathers of mankind'
appear, each presiding over a period of seventy-one 'great ages' with
a surplus. Each ‘great age' is further divided into four ‘ages' (yuga)
of progressive deterioration like the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages
of Greek and Roman mythology. These are named, from the numbers on
the dice, Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali, and are accordingly supposed to
last for periods represented by the proportion 4:3:2:1. We need not
follow this subdivision of time down to its ultimate fraction 'the twinkling
of an eye' (nimesha) or dwell on the sectarian zeal which leads some of the
## p. 271 (#305) ############################################
XII ]
THE MANUS
271
9
Purāṇas to assert that an 'aeon' of Brahmā is but ‘the twinkling of an eye'
in the endurance of Çiva or Vishņu.
The account of the manvantara of Manu Svāyambhuva, the first in
the series of fourteen, includes a description of the universe as it now exists
or is supposed to exist. The greater part of this description is, like the
chronology, imaginary. The world, according to this primitive geography,
consists of seven concentric continents separated by encircling seas.
These are the 'seas of treacle and seas of butter' at which Lord Macaulay,
with his utter inability to understand any form of early culture, scoffed in
his celebrated minute on Indian education. The innermost of these
continents, which-and here we come to actuality-is separated from
the next by salt water, is Jambudvīpa; and of Jambudvīpa the most
important region is Bharalavarsha or Bhārata, that is to say, the sub-
continent of India :
The country that lies north of the ocean, and south of the snowy mountains, is
Bhārata ; for there dwell the descendants of Bharata . . .
The seven main chains of mountains in Bhārata are Mahendra, Malaya, Sahya,
Çuktimat, Riksha, Vindhya, and Pāripātra. . .
On the east of Bhārata dwell the Kirātas (the barbarians); on the west, the
Yavanas; in the centre reside Brāhmans, Kshatriyas Vaiçyas, and Cūdras. (Vishņu
Pur. , trans, Wilson. II. pp. 127-9. )
General descriptions such as this are followed by lists, more or less
detailed, of the rivers which flow from the Himālayas and the seven
great ranges, and of the tribes inhabiting the various regions. As in all
early geography, the district is known by the plural of the tribal name.
Similar lists are found also in the Mahābhārata and elsewhere. This
extensive geographical literature gives a remarkably full account of the
whole sub-continent.
The geographical, like the dynastic, lists have evidently been brought
up to date from time to time, since foreign invaders of very different dates
appear in them. These seem to range from the Yavanas, Çakas, and
Pahlavas, who came into India in the second and first centuries B. C. , to the
Hūņas, who broke up the Gupta empire at the end of the fifth century A. D.
The fifth and last section of the Purāņas, the vamçānucharita,gives an
account of the kings of the earth, the descendants of Manu Vaivasvata, the
'son of the Sun. ' The narrative uses all three tenses, past, present, and
future ; for it recounts the kings who have been, the kings who are,
and the kings who are to be. The earliest of these genealogies, like
the most ancient chronicles of other peoples, are legendary. They trace
the descent of the rulers of this world from the Sun and Moon, and
through them from the Creator- a claim inherited and still maintained by
the Sūrajbansi and the Chandrabansi families of Rājput princes. Such
pedigrees have been pieced together from fragments of religious lore or
from fancied etymologies on to which old-world traditions and speculations
## p. 272 (#306) ############################################
272
THE PURĀNAS
[CH.
have been engrafted. Ilā, the daughter of Manu, from whom the Lunar
family is derived, personifies, as her name denotes, the sacrificial offering
made by Manu in the legend of the Flood (Çata Br. , 1, 8, 1, 11). Such
legendary characters are everywhere the result of man's early speculations
on the origin of the world. The first glimpses of authentic history only
appear when tribal names are inserted in the genealogies under the dis-
guise of eponymous ancestors. These, too, are the outcome of hypothesis,
but of hypothesis founded on facts. All the members of a tribe are pre-
sumably descended from a common ancestor, and related tribes are des-
cended from related ancestors. On these supposed individuals the names
of the tribes are conferred ; and they supply a sort of genealogical frame-
;
work which continues to be filled in by tradition until the age of records.
Once fashioned in this way such genealogies are accepted without question
until the period when critical scholarship arises and undertakes its first
duty, which is to discriminate between legend and fact in the story of
past ages.
In the Purāņas, which were the common scriptures of the ruling
Āryan peoples of Northern and Western India, the traditional genealogies
of the royal houses have been collected and made to form a consistent
whole. Not only are the ancient tribes of the Rigveda and the kingdoms
immediately descended from them represented here, but the realms of
Kosala (Ayodhyā), Videha, Vaicāli, and Magadha, which were not
Āryanised until a later date, have also been brought into the scheme and
furnished with a still longer and more august pedigree. They belong to
the Solar family and are derived directly from Manu through Ikshvāku.
A family of princes bearing this name is known from Vedic literature ;
and it is quite possible that the Solar dynasties of Kosala and other king-
doms to the east of the Middle Country may have been descended from
this family. If so, the Ikshvāku of the genealogical tree must be regarded
as an eponymous ancestor ; and as his superhuman origin had to be
explained, a myth founded on a far-fetched etymology of his name was
invented. Iksh vāku was so called because he was born from the sneeze
(kshava) of Manu (Vishnu Pur. trans. Wilson, il, p. 259).
Fragments of historical fact may no doubt be found embedded even
in the earliest list ; but these fragments have been carried down the stream
of time and deposited far away from their original home. Thus, for
instance, Purukutsa and his son Trasadasyu, who in the Rigveda are
Pūrus living on the Sarasvati, appear in the Purāņas among the Solar kings
of Kosala; Vadhryaçva, Divodāsa, Pijavana, and Sudās, who form a direct
line in the succession of Bharata princes ruling in the country between the
a
## p. 273 (#307) ############################################
XIII)
TRADITIONAL GENEALOGIES
273
>
case
Sarasvati and Dșishadvati appear in this order, but with intervening
reigns, among the kings of N. Pañchāla'.
It is probable that these
apparently conflicting statements are not really contradictory: the chain of
evidence which might bring the tradition of the Purāņas into substantial
agreement with the Rigveda has been broken.
But it is clear that documents of this kind can only be used with the
greatest caution. To some extent at least they have unquestionably been
fabricated in accordance with preconceived opinions. How these pedigrees
have been elaborated, even at a comparatively late date, by court poets
who sought to magnify the ancient lineage of their lord, may sometimes
be seen at a glance. For example, in the genealogy of the Ikshvākus of
Kosala the immediate predecessors of Prasenajit, the contemporary of
Buddha, are Çākya, Çuddhodana, Siddhārtha and Rāhula. That is to say,
the eponymous hero of Buddha's clan, Buddha's father, Buddha himself,
and his son have all been incorporated in the dynastic list of the kings of
Kosala.
It seems impossible to bring the Purāņic genealogies into any satis-
factory relation with the Vedic literature or with one another until we
approach the period at which they profess to have been recited, that is to
say, the reign of Parikshit in the case of the Vishņu Pur, and the reign of
Adhisimakrishna in the of most of the others. Then certain
synchronisms seem to afford a more secure chronological standpoint.
Parikshit is celebrated as a king of the Kurus in the last and latest book
of the Atharva veda : according to the epic, as usually interpreted, he was
appointed king of Hastinā pura more than thirty-six years after the great
war between the Kurus and Pāņdus. Adhisimakrishna, the great great
grandson of Parikshit is represented by the Purāṇas as contemporary with
Divākara of Kosala and Senājit of Magadha. Between the last mentioned
and his predecessor Sahadeva, who was killed in the great war, six reigns
intervene. The length of each reign and the total duration of the different
dynasties of Magadha are given in some versions. Unfortunately the
state of the text is so corrupt and the numbers are 80 discrepant that
this evidence is generally of no value. Leaving out of account an impossi-
ble reading which attributes a reign of one hundred years to Nirāmitra,
the mss. as they stand give a maximum of 289 and a minimum of 259
years to the six reigns which separate the great war from Senājit of
Magadha ; and even the lesser of these estimates would seem to be
excessive. We must be content with the general conclusion that the tradi-
tion of the Purāņas, according to the dynastic lists of Hastināpura and
Magadha, places the great war early in what we know as the Brāhmana
period, say about 1000 B. C.
Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1910, p. 28.
:See Pargiter, Dynasties of the Kali Age, pp. 11, 67.
## p. 274 (#308) ############################################
274
[ci.
THE PURĀNAS
were
That the war between the Kurus and Pāņdus is historical and that it
took place in ancient times cannot be doubted, however much its story has
been overloaded with legend, and however late may be the form in which
it has been handed down. The legend of the war of the Mahābhārata
in India finds its exact parallel in the legend of the Trojan war in Europe.
Each became the great central point to which the nations of the Middle
Ages referred their history. To have shared ancestrally in the fame
of Kurukshetra or of Troy was for the nations the patent of nobility
and ancient descent. The remotest peopies of Eastern and Southern
India and the late invaders of the North-West alike claim a place in the
story of the Mahābhārata, even as the royal houses of Western Europe
traced their origin to Trojan heroes. Until the close of the sixteenth
century no historian of France or Britain doubted that the kings of these
countries were descended from the Trojan Francus or Brutus, both of whom
were in reality eponymous heroes like Yadu and his brothers in the
Purāṇas. Milton in his History of England (1670) repeats the story of Brutus
at length and in detail ; but a chance phrase - 'they who first devis'd
to bring us from some noble ancestor'-shows that historians
beginning to recognise the origin of such legends. And so far as the
Mahābhārata associates most of the nations of India with the great war it
has been devis'd' in the same manner and for the same purpose. A
nucleus of fact has been encrusted with the legendary accretions of ages.
After the great war detailed dynastic tables continue to be given in
the case of the three royal lines only - the Pūrus, the Ikshvākus, and the
kings of Magadha. Other kingdoms are mentioned summarily with a bare
statement of the number of contemporary reigns. The Purānic history is
thus, professedly though not actually (pp. 277, 284), cenfned in its later
stages to the regions now represented by the United Provinces and S. Bihār.
In the Pūrus or Pauravas of the Purāņas the Bharatas of the Rigveda
and the Kurus of the Brāhmaṇas have been merged. In the Rigveda both
the Pūrus and the Bharatas live in the land of the Sarasvati (Brahmăvarta
or Sarhind). But already the Ārva occupation of Kurukshetra, the
adjacent country of the upper Jumar and Ganges on the south-east, was
beginning; for a victory on the Jumna gained by Sudās, king of the
Tșitsus, over a native leader called Bheda is referred to in vii, 18, 19. In
the Purāṇas, Sudas and his family appear in the list of the kings of
N. Pañchāla to the east of Kurukshetra. That is to say, the later kings of
N.
