Studies in the Puranic Records on Hindu Rites and Customs c2.1

c2.1

The present work (*Studies in the Purāṇic Records on Hindu Rites and Customs*) was written in 1933-35, when I was a Research Student at the University of Dacca (now in Bangla Desh); and it was published by the said University a few years later, in 1940. At that time no critical edition of the Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, or any of the Purāṇas or Upapurāṇas had been published, nor was there in printed form any of the parts of Lakṣmīdhara’s voluminous Smṛti work Kṛtya-kalpataru, which abounds in references to and quotations from the Epics and the Purāṇas and Upapurāṇas and is thus extremely helpful in checking their contents and determining their chronology. I could not even find within my reach any complete or incomplete Ms. of Lakṣmīdhara’s work. Of Ballālasena’s Dānasāgara, which is equally valuable for its quotations from the Purāṇic works and records highly interesting information about some of these works, I could use only the India Office (London) Ms., the Bibliotheca Indica edition of this work being published much later.