Adi Purana

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> Vaidyanatha Prabhu wrote:

>

> > I was always wondering, what is Adi Purana. It is not listed among the

> > Maha-Puranas. Which cathegory does it belong to?

>

> Ekanatha Prabhu please enlighten us on the status of Adi Purana and others

> which are not found among the eighteen puranas. KKG quotes from it

> extensively in Cc, Bhaktisisddhanta also quotes from it and Prabhupada

> also quoted from it.

 

I do not know much about the Adipurana. I do not have a copy of this purana,

and I can't say whether the verses quoted in CC are factually to be found in

the printed editions. Below I have quoted from Ludo Rocher's book "The

Puranas" (Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1986):

 

 

Adi-Purana, Bengali translation, Calcutta: Nav…nakŠa L€h€, 1891;

Bombay: Ve‰katevara Press, 1829 (1907).

 

The printed šdiP in 29 chapters, deals primarily with the story of KŠa,

his birth, his being moved to Nanda's house, and all other incidents of his

youth. It ends with breaking a pair of arjuna trees when he was tied to a

mortar by Yaod€. In connection with all this numerous stories are

introduced, all for the glorification of KŠa. KŠa is not merely

conceived as an incarnation of ViŠu: he is the Bhagavat himself as well as

the eternal brahma.

 

The šdiP still raises a number of questions which have not been clearly

answered. First, there are manuscripts which correspond, but only partly,

with the editions; the first four chapters of the printed texts seem to be

generally missing in the manuscripts, whereas some manuscripts, in fifty-one

or fifty-two chapters, carry the story much farther, up to the killing of

Kaˆsa, one of them even adding that this concludes the p™rvakhaŠa of the

text.

 

Second there are numerous quotations from the šdiP in the dharmanibandhas,

many of them on cremation, funeral rites, and other items connected with the

dead; these verses are found neither ih the printed texts nor in the

manuscripts. On the other hand, an šdiP - or šdyaP - appears in the first

place in most lists of upapur€Šas, and the title was obviously known to

al-B…r™n… (see 1.3.3). Hence the conclusion that the quotations are from

*this* šdiP, which was different from the printed one. Hazra dates the

latter between A.D. 1203 and 1525, the other one in the sixth century A.D.

 

Finally, further contributing to the confusion around the ambiguous title

šdiP is the fact that the BrahmaP, the "first" of the mah€pur€Šas, is often

referred to as šdiP, as well as the fact that the title šdiP became very

popular among the Jainas (see 2.1.5).

 

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Your servant

Ekanath das