Mr. Colebrooke observes of the Bhágavata Puráńa, "I am inclined to adopt an opinion supported by many learned Hindus, who consider the celebrated Śrí Bhágavata as the work of a grammarian (Vopadeva), supposed to have lived six hundred years ago 49." Col. Vans Kennedy considers this an incautious admission, because "it is unquestionable that the number of the Puráńas has been always held to be eighteen; but in most of the Puráńas the names of the eighteen are enumerated, amongst which the Bhágavata is invariably included; and consequently if it were composed only six hundred years ago, the others must be of an equally modern date 50." Some of them are no doubt more recent; but, as already remarked, no weight can be attached to the specification of the eighteen names, for they are always complete; each Puráńa enumerates all. Which is the last? which had the opportunity of naming its seventeen predecessors, and adding itself? The argument proves too much. There can be little doubt that the list has been inserted upon the authority of tradition, either by some improving transcriber, or by the compiler of a work more recent than the eighteen genuine Puráńas. The objection is also rebutted by the assertion, that there was another Puráńa to which the name applies, and which is still to be met with, the Deví Bhágavata.

For, the authenticity of the Bhágavata is one of the few questions affecting their sacred literature which Hindu writers have ventured to discuss. The occasion is furnished by the text itself. In the fourth chapter of the first book it is said that Vyása arranged the Vedas, and divided them into four; and that he then compiled the Itihása and Puráńas, as a fifth Veda. The Vedas he gave to Paila and the rest; the Itihása and Puráńas to Lomaharshańa, the father of Súta 51. Then reflecting that these works may not be accessible to women, Śúdras, and

mixed castes, he composed the Bhárata, for the purpose of placing religious knowledge within their reach. Still he felt dissatisfied, and wandered in much perplexity along the banks of the Saraswatí, where his hermitage was situated, when Nárada paid him a visit. Having confided to him his secret and seemingly causeless dissatisfaction, Nárada suggested that it arose from his not having sufficiently dwelt, in the works he had finished, upon the merit of worshipping Vásudeva. Vyása at once admitted its truth, and found a remedy for his uneasiness in the composition of the Bhágavata, which he taught to Śuka his son 52. Here therefore is the most positive assertion that the Bhágavata was composed subsequently to the Puráńas, and given to a different pupil, and was not therefore one of the eighteen of which Romaharshańa the Seta was, according to all concurrent testimonies, the depositary. Still the Bhágavata is named amongst the eighteen Puráńas by the inspired authorities; and how can these incongruities be reconciled?