Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c8.172

c8.172

It has been pointed out above, that dharma was no ingredient of the earliest Puranas except probably such simple lessons as might be conveyed incidentally in the five special subjects of those Puranas; and these four doctrines cited by Āpastamba support that view. The third and fourth are not matters of dharma but of ancient cosmogony. The second is not dharma properly speaking, for it deals with criminal guilt and not sin, and merely declared a rule of common-sense jurisprudence. The first alone comes within the description of dharma. Only one then of the matters which Āpastamba quotes from Puranas belongs to dharma, and this fact is no proof that dharma was a subject dealt with in the earliest Puranas, because his book was concerned with dharma and he naturally cited only points of dharma.¹ The true inference therefrom would be that the Puranic brahmans had already begun to incorporate some dharma in the Puranas in his time.