The Geography of the Puranas c8.206

c8.206

To sum up, the Purāṇic description of the Northern Regions of Jambū Dwīpa covers a very vast area, from the Urals and the Caspian to the Yenisei and from the Turkestan, Tien-Shan ranges to the Arctic. It describes the topography of the whole land very accurately and in some cases picturesquely, but the facts of human geography, particularly the products and settlements, are treated very scantily. This is natural since for a large region like this one has to be concise to keep the subject-matter within reasonable limits. After all, the Purāṇas are not books of geography and it is creditable that within a few paragraphs their authors have compressed much relevant information about practically unknown and very difficult lands without losing precision or proportion which fact has made the identification of topographical features comparatively easy.