History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c90.118

v7.c90.118

The word ‘purāṇa’ occurs over a dozen times in the Ṛgveda, is an adjective and means ‘ancient, old’. The Nighaṇṭu (III. 27) mentions six Vedic words as having the sense of ‘purāṇa’ viz. *pratnam*, *pradivaḥ*, *pravayaḥ*, *sanemi*, *pūrvyam*, *ahnāya*. Yāska (Nirukta III. 19) derives the word ‘purāṇa’ as ‘purā navam bhavati’ (what was new in former times). The Ṛgveda does not contain the word ‘purātana’ (ancient). Purāṇa may be a very old form of ‘purātana’ through the intermediate form ‘purāana’. From meaning ancient the word ‘purāṇa’ came to mean a work dealing with ancient tales, it became a noun and was applied in the times of the Atharvaveda, the Śatapatha and the Upaniṣads to a class of works containing ancient tales. When purāṇa came to mean a work dealing with ancient tales, to speak of a Bhaviṣyat-purāṇa was apparently a contradiction in terms. That contradiction was probably not minded or was ignored by the thought that works that narrated old tales gradually came to include comparatively recent ones and had therefore to adopt a prophetic style of composition with reference to the latter