History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c90.151

v7.c90.151

Prof. Ramchandra Dikshitar also has written a good deal on the Purāṇas. His writings are beset by the same infirmity that attaches to Prof. Hazra's work to some extent. For example, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the 13th Indian History Congress (pp. 46-50) on the Viṣṇupurāṇa he first states (p. 46) that he is more concerned with the extant Viṣṇupurāṇa and after pointing out that the topics of vratas, of fasts, of tīrtha, are absent from the extant Viṣṇupurāṇa he concludes that the extant Viṣṇupurāṇa can safely be placed *in the 6th or 7th century B. C.* Hardly any modern and critical scholar would accept such a date for the extant Viṣṇupurāṇa. Instead of relying on the absence of certain topics he should rather have relied on what it actually contains to find out the probable date of the extant Viṣṇupurāṇa.