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The Purāṇas. By Ludo Rocher, (A History of Indian Literature, Vol. II Fasc. 3.)
pp. vii, 282, Wiesbaden, Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, 1986. DM 120.

Article  in  Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland. Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland · April 2011
DOI: 10.1017/S0035869X0014105X

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the history of religions, or to summarise the results of his investigations for them. Since the
historian of religions, for example, can hardly be acquainted in detail with the primary sources
of several religious traditions he has to deal with, he cannot be expected to read monographs
of this kind. Unless the author plans to crown his research efforts with a new comprehensive
presentation of his results, the wider field of religious studies will benefit from them only if
some other Indologist undertakes this formidable task. So far, however, it transpires that the
author has one or two other monographs of a similar type in the offing.

KAREL WERNER

THE PURANAS. By LUDO ROCHER. (A History of Indian Literature, Vol. II, Fasc. 3.) pp. vii,
282. Wiesbaden, Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, 1986. DM 120.

As the first comprehensive study of the voluminous body of literature classed as the
Puranas, this volume fills a very real need. Rocher himself is at some pains to point out that
Puranic studies have not been as neglected as it has been fashionable to suggest, but what has
been lacking hitherto is an adequate survey and evaluation both of the Puranas themselves and
of the secondary literature .This Rocher now provides.
The book is divided, virtually equally, into two parts, the first of which deals both with the
history of Purana scholarship and with general issues about the Puranas, while the second
provides a survey and discussion of individual Puranas and related texts (in alphabetical
order). The strong emphasis on historiography is exceptional among the contributions to the
History of Indian Literature but can undoubtedly be justified from the extent to which older
attitudes have moulded current thinking, although it is perhaps questionable whether the
frequent direct quotation of earlier scholars represents the most effective use of the space
available. Conversely, the copious bibliographic information distributed throughout the
volume (in a general bibliography, in the lavish footnotes and in topical bibliographies- some
in Part I but most relating to the individual Puranas in Part II) is extremely effective in
providing a vast amount of helpful detail; one can only regret, therefore, the decision not to
index the bibliographies and to index the footnotes only selectively, which must to some extent
restrict their usefulness. In general the bibliographies are both thorough and up to date, the
most recent entries being from 1984; occasionally, however, something has been missed and
so, for example, the Visnudharma is said to be "as yet unpublished", although the first part of
Grunendahl's edition appeared in 1983 (also published by Harrassowitz). In any case, access
to the secondary literature, as well as to editions of the texts, should be further enhanced by
the appearance before long of the bibliography being compiled as part of the Tubingen Purana
Project.
A good deal of space is quite rightly devoted to the nature and extent of the Puranas, in
terms both of the pahcalaksana formulation and of the traditional enumeration of 18
Mahapuranas and 18 Upapuranas. The place of the Puranas in Indian literature is also given
separate treatment, with particularly interesting sections on Puranic texts in the vernacular
languages (although the treatment of the Tamil Puranas is surprisingly brief) and on the
relationship of the Puranas to other branches of Sanskrit literature, especially the epics.
Rocher stresses the extent to which printed editions (generally resting on an inadequate
manuscript base) have tended to restrict Puranic studies, "in that they have accidentally raised
one or two versions of each purana to the rank of the purana" (p. 65), and laments the resulting
impoverishment of Purana research. To an extent, the point is nowadays coming to be recog-
nised but it is certainly worth emphasising. Possibly even more significant is the related point
that lack of attention to regional variations may obscure particular religious developments;
Rocher notes this specifically in relation to the place of Durgapuja in the Puranas of NE India
(p. 114). In discussing the growth of the Puranas he also argues that "rather than being the
kernel, the pahcalaksana, like most other parts of the puranas- as we understand them today-
356 REVIEWS OF BOOKS

was a purana in its own right" (p. 96), explaining that he considers that each story, legend and
the like was originally a Purana, a "mini-purana" in his somewhat infelicitous phrase.
However, he here both endorses and raises certain caveats about the approach associated with
Kirfel and his followers, expressing misgivings about its chronological presuppositions. This
leads on naturally to a discussion of the dating of the texts, where he not surprisingly adopts a
rather agnostic stance.
The second part, listing and describing the texts, though no less important, indeed perhaps
more so, can be more briefly assessed. It aims at completeness, listing every title noticed from
the literature, even those mentioned in a single text (the layout of the listing giving these an
undue prominence). For the major Puranas the summary and description are more detailed
(often including helpful notes on the relative location of passages in different editions) and add
up to a major study of the contents of the Purana literature. While it would be possible to
quibble with the weight given to various elements of any one Purana or the amount of
attention to earlier opinion, there can be no question that as a whole this part forms an
excellent guide to the literature, both extant and lost. In view of the high standard of the
scholarship and the general care in presentation throughout, it is regrettable that a number of
minor misprints have crept in.
To an even greater extent than with most volumes in this work, Rocher's will be a watershed
in the study of its subject and should help to give a greater depth and a new impetus to study of
the Puranas. Its publication is most welcome.

J.L.BROCKINGTON

RATNAKARA'S HARAVIJAYA: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SANSKRIT COURT EPIC. By DAVID

In choosing the Haravijaya to serve as an introduction to the Sanskrit court epic, David
Smith has consciously taken up a challenge. This is the longest extant court epic (mahakavya),
its fifty cantos filling 708 pages in the edition of Durgaprasad and Parab (1890). Keith roundly
dismissed it as "a hopeless blunder", Richard Schmidt as "quite simply a monster (schlechthin
ein Monstrum)", and, with one exception, subsequent writers on Sanskrit literature have
endorsed these views, though they are at odds with the traditional Indian valuation of the
work.
The book is in two parts: the first (chapters 1—3) aims to provide a general background to the
court epic and to the Haravijaya in particular, while the second (chapters 4—11) analyses
Ratnakara's poem from various viewpoints.
Ch. 1, besides giving the historical background of the HV, briefly sketches some of the
salient characteristics of mahakavya. To summarize such a large, and largely unstudied, topic
forces one to be so selective that the result is inevitably a patchwork. In fact hardly anything is
said about previous examples of the genre, on the plea that Ratnakara, writing in Kashmir
sometime between 826 and 838, claimed the prose-poet Bana as his model, not Bharavi or
Magha, and that the HV is different in spirit from earlier mahakavyas.
Ch. 2 deals with the attitude of "poeticians" (alamkarika) to mahakavya, and makes the
important point that the formulae of poetics are inadequate for a full appreciation of Sanskrit
poetry and that analysis of the HV in terms of alamkara and rasa will be unhelpful and not very
illuminating. The author rightly stresses that the "poeticians" were theorists, not literary
critics, that analysis is one thing, appreciation another. Keith's imperfect sympathies,
stemming from a European-oriented aesthetic, have produced an over-reaction which
demands that one interpret Sanskrit literature purely in terms of the native tradition of
theorists and commentators (as though such a thing were possible, even were it desirable). Dr