The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.2

v1.c24.2

THE Purāṇas, or collections of ‘old-world’ legends, contain the traditional genealogies of the principal ruling houses of the Middle Country. They are closely connected both in form and substance with the epics and law-books. All three varieties of literature are written in the same kind of verse and in the same kind of Sanskrit; and they have much of their subject-matter in common. Not isolated verses merely but long passages recur word for word in them all. They are all alike inheritors of the same stock of legendary and traditional lore; and, so far as the nature of their contents is concerned, it is not always possible to draw any hard and fast line of distinction between them. Thus from different points of view the Mahābhārata may be regarded, as indeed it regards itself, as an epic, a law-book, or a Purāṇa.