Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c9.63

c9.63

There is much traditional history including fairly copious genealogies down to the time of that battle and the death of Kṛṣṇa and the Pāṇḍavas, and then all the genealogies stop short except those of the three great kingdoms of Hastināpura, Ayodhyā and Magadha, although other old dynasties continued to exist, such as those of Pañcāla, Kāśi, Mithilā, &c.¹ There is a little historical tradition of the century or so that followed the battle, yet only concerning the first five Paurava kings in the first of those three kingdoms, and nothing about the two other kingdoms. After that century or so there is no historical tradition, and the genealogies of those three kingdoms are given in prophetic form, but were manifestly compiled long afterwards out of Prakrit chronicles.² Yet there were traditions about those ‘future’ kings, as, for instance, about the kings in Buddha’s time and about king Udayana of Vatsa,³ and none such are noticed in the Puranas, as far as I am aware. These facts, much traditional history down to the death of the Pāṇḍavas, a very little for a century or so following, and then none whatever in the Puranas, prove that there must have been a closing stage in tradition during that century or so—that is, that the original Purana must have been compiled about that time.