Public Administration in Ancient India c4.19

c4.19

¹ Comparatively recent dates have been assigned by many scholars to the Purāṇas. But even Prof. H. H. Wilson admits that "a very great portion of the contents of many, some portion of the contents of all, is genuine and old. The sectarian interpolation or embellishment is always sufficiently palpable to be set aside, without injury to the more authentic and primitive material." Vishnu Purāṇa, Preface, p. vi. Mr. Pargiter says, "Metrical accounts of the dynasties that reigned in Northern India after the great battle between the Pāṇdavas and the Kauravas, grew up gradually, composed in slokas in a literary Prākrit and recited by bards and minstrels, and after writing was introduced into India, about seven centuries B.C., there would have been no lack of materials from which those accounts could have been composed and written down." Dynasties of the Kali Age, Introduction, xxvii.