Sacred Laws of Aryas

Author(s): Gorge Buhler
Publisher: Oxford

Page 32

INTRODUCTION,
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authority was the original on which the existing Upapurâna is based. And in favour of this view it may be urged that passages, similar to Apastamba's quotation, actually occur in our Paurânic texts. In the Gyotishprakâra section of several of the chief Puranas we find, in connection with the description of the Path of the Manes (pitriyana)', the assertion that the pious sages, who had offspring and performed the Agnihotra, reside there until the general destruction of created things (â bhůtasamplavât), as well as, that in the beginning of each new creation they are the propagators of the world (lokasya samtânakarah) and, being re-born, re-establish the sacred law. Though the wording differs, these passages fully agree in sense with Âpastamba's Bhavishyat-purana which says, 'They (the ancestors) live in heaven until the (next) general destruction of created things. At the new creation (of the world) they become the seed.' In other passages of the Puranas, which refer to the successive creations, we find even the identical terms used in the quotation. Thus the Vayup., Adhy. 8, 23, declares that those beings, which have gone to the Ganaloka, become the seed at the new creation' (punah sarge ... bîgartham tå bhavanti hi).
These facts prove at all events that Åpastamba took his quotation from a real Purâna, similar to those existing. If it is literal and exact, it shows, also, that the Puranas of his time contained both prose and verse.
Further, it is possible to trace yet another of Åpastamba's quotations from a Purana.' The three Puranas, mentioned above, give, immediately after the passages referred to, enlarged versions of the two verses 2 regarding the sages, who begot offspring and obtained burial-grounds,' and
that the orthodox sects used Puranas as text books for popular readings, the Purânapathana of our days, and that some, at least, of the now existing Puranas are the latest recensions of those mentioned in Vedic books.
1 Vậyup., Adhy. 50, 208 seqq.; Matsyap., Adhy. 123, 96 seqq.; Vishnup. II, 8. 86-89; H. H. Wilson, Vishnup., vol. ii, pp. 263-268 (ed. Hall).
Åp. Dh. II, 9, 23, 4-5.
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