The Skandapurana Project

December 14, 2000

1 september 2000

The publication in 1988 of the first edition of the original

Skandapurana (SPBh), which made use of three very old Nepalese palm-leaf

manuscripts as well as a recent paper manuscript of another recension of

the text, was a major event in Puranic studies, although it appears that

even the editor, the Nepalese scholar Krsnaprasada Bhattarai, did not

have a very clear idea of the nature and importance of the work that he

had edited. Further research (see ABI and SP I {Prolegomena}) has showed

clearly that this work is the earliest surviving text called

Skandapurana; that it was cited as authoritative by a range of authors

in North India before the thirteenth century; and that its composition

can be placed no later than the eighth century and possibly as early as

the sixth century AD.

The remarkable circumstance that several Nepalese manuscripts of the

work survive that are of great antiquity means, moreover, that it is

possible to establish, with a much greater degree of certainty than with

any other Purana, a form of the text that was in existence by the ninth

century. It must be borne in mind that in the case of other Puranas,

even where there are good reasons to believe that a nucleus of the work

may be as old as or older than the Skandapurana, such editions as we

have are all based on manuscripts of much later date. From what we know

of the fluidity of the transmission of Puranic literature, and the

divergencies between different manuscripts purportedly of the selfsame

work (Rocher 1986; Bakker 1989), it is realistic to say that, unless we

have such firm evidence as a testimonium in a dated text, a given verse

or passage in a published Puranic text can rarely if ever be assigned

with confidence to a date much earlier than the earliest manuscript used

for the edition.

(long article continued)

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