amniotic sac or stool urine and worms?

[theist]

 

Vyasadeva is a saktyavesa avatar, that means he is a jiva empowered by God to perform a particular task, not an omniscient being.

 

On top of that there is the infuence of time. The integrity of ancient manuscripts have often been compromised by the passage of time. There are variations between existing manuscripts of many Puranas, even Srimad Bhagavatam. I am talking about quite significant differences, not a mere skipped verse. Some Puranas were even reconstructed by scholars from many disjointed surviving manuscripts.

 

The faith of many devotees in absolute correctness of the existing texts is very much like the faith of Christians that King James Bible is the actual Word of God.

 

I never knew that about the variations of the Puranas. I had always thought that the sanskrit was written in stone and only interpretations differed. Just goes to show how easy it is to maintain false beliefs .

 

But we are not left alone. The Lord in the heart is always here to help us see Him in the true light.

 

The analogy of the King James Bible is spot on. There are some Christians who consider any other translations fiddled with by the Devil. :-)

[Guest guest]

 

I never knew that about the variations of the Puranas. I had always thought that the sanskrit was written in stone and only interpretations differed.

 

Sanskrit itself has undergone some changes since the Vedic Age and many old words have lost their original meaning. That makes translating technical texts very challenging and speculative.

 

Palm leaf manuscripts on which virtually all vedic texts are based are not a very durable media. Very, very few are more than 600 years old, at which point the ink fades completely and the leaf disintegrates. That means these texts were copied many times over the last 5000 years.

 

It is a very interesting field of research, with many ancient works still rotting away in various temples, often never transcribed onto more permanent media. Devotees are usually very naive when it comes to this subject and have plenty of faith but very little practical knowledge about the Vedic writings. There is a HUGE difference between the way the sruti and the smriti texts were treated over the centuries by the Vedic scribes and scholars, resulting in an almost slavish attention to the original with the sruti writings and a very liberal periodic re-editing of the smriti writings over the centuries. In other words: sruti (Vedas, Upanishads) has not changed much, while the smritis (Puranas, Itihasas) were re-written and re-edited periodically, sometimes in conjunction with the re-copying of the old manuscripts.