Art. II.—Essays on the Puránas. I.

Extract

The earliest inquiries into the religion, chronology, and history of the Hindús, ascertained that there existed a body of writings especially devoted to those subjects, from which it was sanguinely anticipated much valuable and authentic information would be derived. These were the Puránas of Sanscrit literature, collections which, according to the definition of a Purána agreeably to Sanscrit writers, should treat of the creation and renovation of the universe, the division of time, the institutes of law and religion, the genealogiès of the patriarchal families, and the dynasties of kings; and they, therefore, offered a prospect of our penetrating the obscurity in which the origin and progress of the Hindú social system had so long been enveloped. A formidable difficulty, however, presented itself in the outset, arising from the voluminous extent of this branch of the literature of the Hindús, and the absence of all facilities for acquiring a knowledge of its nature. The Puránas are eighteen in number, besides several works of a similar class, called Upa, or minor, Puránas. The former alone comprehend, it is asserted, and the assertion is not very far from the truth, four hundred thousand slokas, or sixteen hundred thousand lines, a quantity which any individual European scholar could scarcely expect to peruse with care and attention, unless his whole time were devoted exclusively for very many years, to the task. Nor was any plan, short of the perusal of the whole, likely to furnish satisfactory means of judging of their general character: few of them are furnished with anything in the shape of an index, or summary of contents, and none of them conform to any given arrangement; so that to know with accuracy what any one contains, it is necessary to read the entire work. The immensity of the labour seems to have deterred Sanscrit students from effecting even what was feasible, the publication or translation of one or two of the principal Puránas, and to the present day not one of them is accessible to the European public.