to “the princes of the solar and lunar races” whom one would expect to come
later. Yet the plain meaning ofvam.s ́ais “genealogy” in general rather than of
any particular group, and vam.s ́a ̄nucaritais equally general in its reference:
“stories about those included in the genealogies.” Moreover, some of the pas-
sages in Kirfel’s vam.s ́asection include stories (e.g. Va ̄yu65.144–59), while his
vam.s ́a ̄nucaritasection has passages in it which are purely genealogical (e.g. Va ̄yu
88.62–77). From the way in which these vam.s ́aandvam.s ́a ̄nucarita laks.an.asare
mixed together, it would appear that they were never intended to be taken as
“sections” which could be neatly carved out and distinguished from each other,
but rather they were seen as “strands,” interwoven with each other into patterns
which could vary from one Pura ̄n.a to another.
Today more flexible interpretations ofpañcalaks.an.aare available alongside
those of Kirfel and Wilson. Greg Bailey sees the pañcalaks.an.ascheme as marking
the Pura ̄n.ic genre as a whole, and controlling the contents of individual Pura ̄n.as
only “in varying degrees of completeness or fragmentation according to the
empirical and ideological conditions determining their composition and recita-
tion” (Bailey 1995: 13 n. 7). Velcheru Narayana Rao sees pañcalaks.an.aas “the
ideological frame that transforms whatever content is incorporated into that
frame” (Doniger 1993: 87). It does not refer to contents of the Pura ̄n.as but to
the world-view which is imposed upon whatever contents any given Pura ̄n.a may
have, Seen thus, it is of no importance that it occupies so little space in the
Pura ̄n.as overall:
Since the ideas ofpañcalaks.an.aare tacitly assumed in the Brahminic worldview,
they do not even appear in every Pura ̄n.a and do not constitute a sizeable length of
the text even when they appear. (Doniger 1993: 87–8)Before leaving the subject oflaks.an.asit is necessary to mention briefly the
claim of the Bha ̄gavata to be das ́alaks.an.a(Bha ̄gavata2.10.1, 12.7.9). This
expanded list is more likely to represent a conscious self-aggrandizement on the
part of the Bha ̄gavatathan a new stage in the development of the Pura ̄n.as
generally. Again, its components may be taken to indicate an overall perspective,
rather than to function as a table of contents. In the introduction to his trans-
lation of the Bha ̄gavata, Tagare lists the commentators who have assigned one
of the das ́alaks.an.ato each ofskandhas3–12, but says that this “traditional appli-
cation” is no more than “broadly justifiable,” since “there is so much overlap-
ping and repetition of these topics beyond the Skandhas which are supposed to
represent them” (Tagare 1976: xxiii–xxxiii).
Classification Versus Contents
Wilson was so convinced that all Pura ̄n.as ought to contain five blocks of
pañcalaks.an.amaterial that he produced a theory to account for their failure
136 freda matchett