fabled to be but an abridgment, the whole amount being a krore, or ten millions of stanzas, or even a thousand millions. If all the fragmentary portions claiming in various parts of India to belong to the Puráńas were admitted, their extent would much exceed the lesser, though it would not reach the larger enumeration. The former is, however, as I have elsewhere stated 30, a quantity that an individual European scholar could scarcely expect to peruse with due care and attention, unless his whole time were devoted exclusively for many years to the task. Yet without some such labour being achieved, it was clear, from the crudity and inexactness of all that had been hitherto published on the subject, with one exception 31, that sound views on the subject of Hindu mythology and tradition were not to be expected. Circumstances, which I have already explained in the paper in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society referred to above, enabled me to avail myself of competent assistance, by which I made a minute abstract of most of the Puráńas. In course of time I hope to place a tolerably copious and connected analysis of the whole eighteen before Oriental scholars, and in the mean while offer a brief notice of their several contents.

In general the enumeration of the Puráńas is a simple nomenclature, with the addition in some cases of the number of verses; but to these the Matsya Puráńa joins the mention of one or two circumstances peculiar to each, which, although scanty, are of value, as offering means of identifying the copies of the Puráńas now found with those to which the Matsya refers, or of discovering a difference between the present and the past. I shall therefore prefix the passage descriptive of each Puráńa from the Matsya. It is necessary to remark, however, that in the comparison instituted between that description and the Puráńa as it exists, I necessarily refer to the copy or copies which I employed for the purpose of examination and analysis, and which were procured with some trouble and cost in Benares and Calcutta. In some instances my manuscripts

have been collated with others from different parts of India, and the result has shewn, that, with regard at least to the Brahmá, Vishńu, Váyu, Matsya, Padma, Bhágavata, and Kúrma Puráńas, the same works, in all essential respects, are generally current under the same appellations. Whether this is invariably the case may be doubted, and farther inquiry may possibly shew that I have been obliged to content myself with mutilated or unauthentic works 32. It is with this reservation, therefore, that I must be understood to speak of the concurrence or disagreement of any Puráńa with the notice of it which the Matsya P. has preserved.

Footnotes

xii:25 As. Res. vol. XVI. p. 10.

xiii:26 Asiatic Journal, March 1837, p. 241.

xiii:27 As. Res. vol. XVI. p. 85.