The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c16.s1.29

c16.s1.29

The Matsya Purāṇa preserves the tradition that the Purāṇas were composed after the Mahābhārata by Vyāsa. The Kūrma Purāṇa gives a list of nineteen Purāṇas See also Wilson, Introduction to the Viṣṇu Purāṇa. For an 11th century view of Purāṇas, Alberunī, tr. Sachau, Vol. I, 130-31. Recently there has set in a reaction against the nineteenth century underrating of Purāṇas. For instance, Rapson thinks that they have preserved, though in a perverted form, an independent tradition which supplements the priestly tradition of the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, and which goes back to the same period (Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 302). The Puranic data have been worked out by Pargiter, Dynasties of the Kali Age; Ancient Indian Historical Tradition: various articles in J. R. A. S. The Sthala-Purāṇas or Mahātmyas are legion but they contain hardly any administrative data.