Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c9.12

c9.12

The ‘Purana’, as already pointed out, first came into existence as a collection of ancient legendary lore, and this, its original nature, is an essential fact. Āpastamba obviously refers in his citations of Puranas (chap. III) to definite books. Now the Bhaviṣyat Purana plainly professed by its title to treat of ‘the future’, and its title is a contradiction in terms. The first inference therefore is that such a name could not have been possible until the term Purana had become so thoroughly specialized as to have lost its proper meaning, and had become merely the designation of a particular class of books. It would have required the existence of a number of books called Puranas to produce that change, and manifestly they must have had their own special names to distinguish one from another, and so convert their common title Purana into a mere class designation.¹