The Purana Index v1.c3.3

v1.c3.3

A considerable time elapsed when F E. Pargiter by his learned publications Ancient Historical Tradition and Dynasties of the Kali Age showed to the world what amount of historical material and genuine historical tradition can be gathered from this mass of literature which goes by the name Purāṇas. His was a real attempt to obtain definite results to reconstruct the dynasties of the Kali age. He also endeavoured to study the chronology and genealogy of well-known Indian sages, seers and kings in pre-historic India. These two works of his evoked a revival of interest in a closer study of Purāṇic literature by Orientalists. Thus we have from Prof. Winternitz a sound and scholarly chapter on the Purāṇas in his History of Indian Literature No less learned is Prof. E. J Rapson's contribution on Purāṇas to the first volume of the Cambridge History of India. We must also mention Willibald Kirfel, a German Orientalist who has written the Purāṇa Pañchalakṣaṇa; it is another successful attempt to prove that the five topics dealt with in a Purāṇa are not born of fictitious imagination but a representation of the evolution of the universe treated earlier in Vedic literature. In this volume (Das Purana Pañcalakshana, 1927) all relevant common passages are collected together.