Studies in the Epics and Puranas c10.35

c10.35

to the same period during which the Vāyu Purāṇa is supposed to have gone out of currency. It may also be noted in this connection that though the Vāyu Purāṇa does not contain the exact quotation as given by Śrīdhara, it has a stanza sufficiently indicating a variant text.²⁰ So it is more plausible to suppose that Śrīdhara Svāmin had before him another version of the present Vāyu text. Then again, the number of Ślokas of the traditional Śiva Mahāpurāṇa (viz. 100,000), which is not available, will make the total number of stanzas of the Purāṇas more than 400,000. The number of stanzas of the portion of the printed Śiva that can strictly be called Vāyavīya is only about 4,000 as against the 24,000 given by the Anukramaṇīs. Thus we see that the description is not applicable to the printed Śiva Purāṇa.