APPENDIX.

[No one among the contemporaries of Professor Wilson is known to have qualified himself more adequately than Colonel Vans Kennedy for discussing the subject of the Puránas; and it has, therefore, been considered that the following correspondence must, with all its defects, possess, to the readers of these volumes, sufficient interest to justify its republication in this place. The seven letters of which it consists—namely, five entitled On Professor Wilson's Theory respecting the Puránas, the Professor's Reply, and the Colonel's Rejoinder,--originally appeared in the London Asiatic Journal for 1840 and 1841, addressed to its editor. F. H.]

SIR: In the learned and ingenious remarks contained in the Preface to his Translation of the Vishnu Purána, Professor Wilson remarks that the Puránas "may be acquitted of subservience to any but sectarial imposture. They were pious* frauds for temporary purposes;" and that they "are, also, works of evidently different ages, and have been compiled under different circumstances, the precise nature of which we can but imperfectly conjecture from internal evidence, and from what we know of the history of religious opinion in India. It is highly probable that, of the present popular forms of the Hindu religion, none assumed their actual state earlier than the time of Sankara Áchárya, the great Śaiva reformer, who flourished, in all likelihood, in the eighth or ninth century. Of the Vaishnava teachers, Rá

* Colonel Kennedy omitted this word.

† Vol. I., Preface, p. XI.

mánuja dates in the twelfth century; Madhwáchárya, in the thirteenth; and Vallabha, in the sixteenth; and the Puránas seem to have accompanied, or followed, their innovations; being obviously intended to advocate the doctrines they taught."* He further observes that

"a very great portion of the contents of many [of the Puránas], some portion of the contents of all, is genuine and old. The sectarial interpolation, or embellishment, is always sufficiently palpable to be set aside. without injury to the more authentic and primitive material; and the Puráñas, although they belong especially to that stage of the Hindu religion in which faith in some one divinity was the prevailing principle, are, also, a valuable record of the form of Hindu belief which came next in order to that of the Vedas." And yet Professor Wilson, at the same time, maintains that religious instruction is not one of the five topics which are treated of in a genuine Purána, and that its occurrence in the Puráñas now extant is a decisive proof that these are not the same works, in all respects, that were current, under the denomination of Puránas, in the century prior to Christianity.

+

These, however, and similar remarks contained in that Preface, seem to be inconsistent and inconclusive; for, if the Puráñas, in their present form, are of so modern a date, and if the ancient Puráńas are no longer extant, by what means can it be ascertained that any portion of the contents of the works now bearing the name of Puráñas is genuine and old?

† Colonel Kennedy-a very heedless quoter,-had "essentially". Vol. I., Preface, pp. XI., XII.

*

Professor Wilson rejects, as not belonging to the Puránas, in the time of Amara Simha (B. C. 56), all those parts of the present Puráňas which relate to the rites and observances and to the theology of the Hindus; but it is those parts only which admit of being compared with other Hindu works, and with all that is known of the Hindu religion. It is, also, unquestionable that certain works denominated Puráñas have been immemorially considered, by the Hindus, as sacred books; and it must be evident that, unless the doctrines of the Hindu religion were inculcated in those works, they could contain nothing which could communicate to them a sacred character. The opinion, therefore, of Professor Wilson, that the genuine Puráñas treated of profane subjects only, is, obviously, incompatible with that profound reverence with which the Puráñas are regarded by all Hindus, even at the present day. The only argument, also, which he has adduced in support of this opinion depends entirely upon the use and meaning of the term pancha-lakshana, as applied to a Purána. But the passage in Sanskrit, quoted in the note in page VII., does not admit of the restricted sense which Professor Wilson has given to it; because the first of the five topics there mentioned, or sarga, is inadequately expressed† by "primary creation, or cosmogony." This will be at once evident by a reference

1

The five topics, as explained by Professor Wilson, are: "1. Primary creation, or cosmogony; 2. Secondary creation, or the destruction and renovation of worlds, including chronology; 3. Genealogy of gods and patriarchs; 4. Reigns of the Manus,

or periods called Manwantaras; and, 5. History."

But see what the Colonel says in p. 299, note 2, infra.

to the contents of the Translation of the Vishnu Purána, where, under sarga, are enumerated:* Vishnu, the origin, existence, and end of all things; his existence before creation; his first manifestations; description of Pradhána, of Prakriti, of the active cause; development of effects, of the mundane egg. For the description of all that precedes the appearance of the mundane egg, which occurs in the Vishnu and other Puráńas, is the most abstruse and sacred part of Hindu theology; as it explains the real nature of the Supreme Being, and of those manifestations of his divine essence which lead men to believe in the actual existence of a material world. The first, therefore, of the five topics treated of in a genuine Purána, according to Professor Wilson, necessarily includes religious instruction; because the antecedents to creation could not have been described without, at the same time, explaining the distinction between the one sole-existing spirit and those illusive appearances which seem to be composed of matter. The second, also, of those topics is, equally, of a religious nature; for an account of the destruction and renovation of worlds must, necessarily, include a description of the means and agents employed, by the Supreme Being, for those purposes. Under the first two topics, consequently, is comprised a great part of what is cóntained in the Puráńas, as at present extant: namely, a description of the real essence of the Supreme Being, and of the illusive nature of the universe; of the production of Brahmá, Vishnu, Siva, and their female energies; of the origin of angelic beings and holy sages; and of all the circumstances relating *This is not a fair representation.

to the repeated creation, destruction, and renovation of the world; and it may, therefore, be justly concluded, that these subjects were also treated of in the eighteen Puránas, as originally committed to writing, and that the term pancha-lakshana affords no grounds for the conclusion which Professor Wilson has deduced from its use and meaning.

But those parts of the present Puránas which relate to festivals, rites, and observances, and to the worship of particular deities, may appear to support this remark of Professor Wilson: "They [the Puránas] are no longer authorities for Hindu belief, as a whole: they are special guides for separate and, sometimes, conflicting branches of it; compiled for the evident purpose of promoting the preferential, or, in some cases, the sole, worship of Vishnu, or of Siva."* It is not clear what is here meant by the "Hindu belief, as a whole;" for there are, I believe, no traces, now extant, of the Hindu religion having ever existed as one uniform system of belief in one and the same deity. But the antiquity of the Upanishads is not disputed; and, in one or other of them, the attributes of the Supreme Being are distinctly ascribed to Brahmá, Vishnu, Śiva, Deví, Súrya, and Gańeśa; and, consequently, when the Upanishads were composed, there must have been some Hindus who paid a preferential worship to one or other of those deities. These, however, are precisely the same deities to whom the attributes of the Supreme Being are ascribed in one or other of the Puráñas; and, therefore, if the antiquity

* Vol. I., Preface, p. V.