Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c9.3

c9.3

The Vāyu Purana existed before A. D. 620, because it is referred to by Bāṇa in his Harṣa-carita,² and the writing in a MS. of the Skanda in the Royal Library of Nepal shows that that Purana also existed about that time.³ Verses praising gifts of land are quoted in various land-grants, that are dated; and some of those are found only in the Padma, Bhaviṣya and Brahma Puranas, and thus indicate that those Puranas were in existence before A. D. 500 and even long before that time.⁴ Some of those verses, which occur in grants of the years 475-6 and 482-3, are declared in some grants to have been enunciated by Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata.⁵ They do not however (as far as I know) occur there, but are found in the Padma and Bhaviṣya, and nowhere else. Such an error, citing the Mahābhārata instead of the Puranas, in a land-grant, which was not a learned treatise, is venial, especially as Vyāsa was believed to be the author of all those works. The mistake shows the pre-eminent position held by the epic then. The important point however is that the grantors assert that a book was the original authority for those verses; not popular lore nor unknown compositions. It follows therefore that either the Padma or the Bhaviṣya or both existed before A. D. 475 and even much earlier, and a similar conclusion, though not so clear, may be drawn as regards the Brahma.