The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.14

v1.c24.14

The critical study of the Purāṇas, 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 Brāhmaṇas, there can be little doubt that valuable historical results will be obtained. The Purāṇas 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 Purāṇa, Milton’s *Paradise Lost*. The descriptions of ancient monarchs and of their realms are essentially historical. 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.