History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c90.109

v7.c90.109

Kirfel's work 'Purāna Pañcalakṣaṇa' is one of fundamental importance so far as the Purāṇas are concerned, since it adopts a new method for the treatment of Paurāṇika material. The German Introduction of this work has been reproduced in English in the Journal of the Shri Venkateśa Institute at Tirupati, in vol. VII. pp. 81-121 and vol. VIII. pp. 9-33. Kirfel disagrees with many of the views of Pargiter. His main conclusions are: Apart from the abridgement in Agni and Garuda as well as the prose paraphrase in Viṣṇu, there are only three complete groups of Purāṇa texts viz. Brahma and Harivaṁśa, Brahmāṇḍa and Vāyu, and that of Matsya, all other Purāṇas containing only smaller or larger parts of the same. Of the three groups, Brahmāṇḍa and Harivaṁśa are the oldest (and not Brahmāṇḍa and Vāyu as Pargiter in A.I.H.T. p 78 says). Kirfel holds that the Brahmāṇḍa and Vāyu must have originally been a single Purāṇa, particularly because the largest parts of both agree with each other, that Pargiter is not right in thinking that the additions in Vāyu and Brahmāṇḍa were borrowed from the ancient Bhaviṣya (Kirfel p 18, vol VII. of J. V. O. I. p 92), but that the borrowed material goes back to an independent text. Kirfel does not accept Pargiter's theory that the Purāṇas were Sanskritizations of Prakrit texts, that the Viṣṇu in its existing form is a younger Purāṇa than the Vāyu or Brahmāṇḍa in spite of the fact that it most faithfully observes the basic arrangement of the five characteristics of Purāṇas. The division of Purāṇas into 18 and the distribution of Purāṇas into *sāttvika*, *rājasa* and *tāmasa* are not original items but are applicable only to the last definitive texts of the Purāṇas Pargiter thought that there existed an Ur-Purāṇa which had treated of the five topics (of sarga &c ) in ideal completeness and clear disposition. Kirfel says that this is scarcely more than an arbitrary assumption (p. XLVIII of Kirfel's Intro. and J. V. O. I. vol. VIII. p. 31).