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The Yuga Purāṇa: a footnote
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
In my critical edition of the Yuga Purāṇa chapter of the Gārgīya Jyotiṣa—a text most noted for its mention of the Yavanas and Śakas in India—I mentioned that there were four known manuscripts of the Gārgīya Jyotiṣa which I had been unable to consult at that time. I was recently able to rectify this situation and discovered as a result that two of those manuscripts do indeed contain the Yuga Purāṇa chapter (together with the entire Gārgīya Jyotiṣa) while the other two do not. The first of the complete manuscripts of the work is in the library of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, catalogued as No. 345 of 1879–80; I have called this manuscript E, and its readings are very similar to those of manuscript H (currently in BHU, Varanasi). The second is No. 1433 in the Itccharam Suryaram Desai collection of Bombay University Library; this I have called manuscript M, and it is closly linked with manuscript B (in Banaras Sanskrit University), even omitting with B some three lines of the work (71a–d and 72a–b).
- Type
- Notes and Communications
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 320 - 322
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1990
References
1 The Yuga Purāṇa: Bibliotheca Indica, Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1986Google Scholar.
2 ibid., p. 21, n. 62.
3 Of the two which do not, one (BORI, no. 36 of 1874–1875Google Scholar) is a selective account of certain chapters of the Gārgīya Jyotiṣa, very similar to Calcutta Th. 218 noted ibid., n. 57; the other (BORI, no. 549 of 1879–80) is a totally different work on jyotiṣa.
4 éloka, 47–48, 56–7Google Scholar.
5 The Yuga Purāṇa, 55–8Google Scholar.
6 Mitchiner, M. B., Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian coinage [IGISC], vol. 9, 800–1Google Scholar; ibid., The Ancient and Classical World [ACI], 367Google Scholar; ?Bhatt, S. K., A unique Indo-Greek coin from Malwa (Indore University Research Journal, 4) 13–17Google Scholar.
7 Sircar, D. C., Select inscriptions, I, 88–9Google Scholar.
8 Mahābhasya 3.2.111.
9 Sircar, , Select inscriptions, I, 213–21Google Scholar; especially line 8 p.
10 Narain, , The Indo-Greeks, 86, 176–8Google Scholar.
11 e.g. M. B. Mitchiner, ACI, 550–5, 580–2; ibid., IGISC, vol. 7, 652–8, 662–72; note too that Puṣyamitra, credited in the Purānas with overthrowing the last Maurya ruler, thereafter established descendants also in Sāketa, as witnessed by the Dhanadeva inscription: Sircar, , Select inscriptions, I, 94–5Google Scholar.
12 The Yuga Purāṇa, 68–75Google Scholar.
13 ibid., 77–82.
14 Many excerpts from the Gārgīya Jyotiṣa are copied in the Mahābhdrata, the Matsya and Agni Purāṇas, Somākara's commentary on the Vedānga Jyotisa, the Atharvaveda Pariśiṣṭas, the Bṛhatsarṃhitā of Varāhamihira and Utpala's commentary thereon; and there are many further correspondences between specifically the Yuga Purāṇa chapter and the Epics and Purāṇas, all pointing to the Yuga Purana being the source for the later Epic and Puranic accounts of the four Yugas, cited and discussed in The Yuga Purāṇa, esp. 5–13 and 37–45.