The Geography of the Puranas c2: Foreword
The Geography of the Purāṇas c2
- Language
- English
Foreword
c2.1
IT is commonly believed that the Purāṇas cover a period in the life of the Indian people extending roughly over one thousand years, starting from somewhere about the time of coming into power of the Shunga Dynasty, to the time of the invasion of India by Mahmud Ghaznavi. It was a very chequered period of our history. Great warriors, powerful monarchs, a brilliant output in the field of art and literature, share the canvas with petty chieftains, the unhealthy growth of blind superstitions and the decay and death of the spirit of adventure in science and thought as well as in practical life. In spite of modern researches, we have yet to know many of the essential facts of the life of those days and among these facts there are many which are related to geography. The Indian of those days was not confined to the narrow parochial limits of his own country. His associations and communications extended to at least a superficial knowledge of a large part of the then known world as in the reference to the Nile and its source in one of the Purāṇas. The orthodox Pandit who constantly swears by the Purāṇas knows very little about their contents. His rhetorical knowledge will not enable him to identify most of the rivers and mountains to which these works refer. But without any such identification, the Purāṇic accounts degenerate into flat and often uninteresting narratives.
c2.2
Prof. S. M. Ali is to be congratulated for his learned work on the geography of the Purāṇas. It is the result of deep study not only of the researches carried out by modern scholars but of relevant ancient literature as well. Without sacrificing scientific austerity he has made the book interesting and instructive. If the world of scholarship accepts his main conclusions he will have established the fact that in the days of the Purāṇas, India was more or less in touch with a greater part of the world to which within a few centuries it turned its back. Obviously, this is not the last word on the subject. The works of Pargiter and Cunningham did something to make Ancient Indian Geography to some extent familiar to those interested in the subject. Prof. Ali's book should go very much farther in that direction and endow names about which we read in ancient literature with meaning. Even apparently fanciful descriptions of oceans like cane-juice, milk and curds might some day be interpreted in a manner not dissonant with modern knowledge.
c2.3
Jaipur 11 November 1965
c2.4
SAMPURNANAND Governor, Rajasthan