History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c90.72

v7.c90.72

The references to eighteen Purāṇas in about a dozen principal purāṇas and the description of their contents in some of them naturally lead to the inference that these passages were added some time after all the eighteen Purāṇas assumed a complete form. It is not possible to hold that all the main purāṇas were composed at the same time by one individual author or even by several contemporary writers. Besides, most of the editions of Purāṇas are based either on a single ms. or on a few mss. collected at random and are not critically edited as is the case with the critical edition of the Mahābhārata published in Poona by the B. O. R. I. Many conclusions therefore, drawn from the current printed editions of the Purāṇas or from mss of the Purāṇas, must be regarded as merely tentative and as likely to turn out to be wrong. What Winternitz said in his History of Indian Literature (English translation, Calcutta, vol. I. p 469) viz. 'that the date of each section, nay, sometimes of each single verse in the Mahābhārata must be determined separately' applies with equal (or perhaps greater) force to the Purāṇas, particularly when one wants to use the section or stanza for historical or comparative purposes.¹³⁶³