Devta Murtiprakaranam tatha Rupmandanam

Author(s): Upendramohan Sankhyatirtha
Publisher: Metropolitan Printing and Publishing House Limited

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along is being drawn through the flood by the fish, there takes place between him and Visņu, incarnated as a fish, a conversation which forms the substance of the Purana. Creation is treated in detail, then follow the genealogies.... Neither are the usual geographical, astronomical and chronological sections absent, and according to V. A. Smith....the lists of kings in this Purana are particularly reliable for the Andhra dynasty. It has very much in common with the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa and there is often literal agreement. There are, however, very numerous later additions and interpolations. For instance,ceremonies at the building of a house (chapts. 252-257), the erection and dedication of statues of deities, temples and palaces (chapts. 258-270)...etc.
"As far as the religious content is concerned, the MatsyaPurāna might be called Śivaite with just as much reason as it is classed as Visnuite. Religious festivals of the Vaiṣṇavas are described side by side with those of the Saivas, and both Visņu and Śiva legends are related. In chapter 13 Devi ("the Goddess", Siva's wife Gauri) enumerates to Dakṣa the one hundred and eight names by which she wishes to be glorified. It is obvious that both sects used the work as a sacred book."81
81. "Regarding the Matsya-Purana, Professor H. H. Wilson writes :
'The Matsya-Purana, it will be seen,...from...its contents, is a miscellaneous compilation, but including, in its contents, the elements of a genuine Purana. At the same time, it is of too mixed a character to be considered as a genuine work of the Paurāņik class; and, upon examining it carefully, it may be suspected that it is indebted to various works, not only for its matter, but for its words.
Although a Saiva work, it is not exclusively so and it has not such sectarian absurdities as the Kurma and Linga. It is a composition of considerable interest; but, if it has extracted its materials from the Padma,which it also quotes on one occasion, the specification of the Upapurāņasit is subsequent to that work and not very ancient.'
But modern scholars consider this Purana as one of the oldest, in fact the Padma-Purana seems to have borrowed from the Matsya and not the reverse. (Vide Vincent Smith's Early History of India. 3rd Ed., pp. 11, 21-23).