Hindu Mythology(1976), O’Flaherty has shown how the analysis of Pura ̄n.ic
myths can yield profounder and more sophisticated answers to some religious
questions than any philosophical approach.
In 1982 the University of Tübingen’s Pura ̄n.a Research Project started, which
has produced valuable tools for pura ̄n.ic study: the work done by Peter Schreiner
and Renate Söhnen, (1987, 1989) on the Brahma ̄pura ̄n.a, the two-volume Epic
and Pura ̄n.ic Bibliography(Stietencron et al. 1992) which includes a wide range of
editions of the Pura ̄n.as, as well as all works written about them up to 1985. Its
latest publication, Greg Bailey’s introduction to and translation of the first part
of the Gan.es ́apura ̄n.a(1995) is much more comprehensive than its title suggests.
It is an introduction to the whole pura ̄n.ic genre, which it approaches in a new
way. Instead of adopting the methods of the text-historical school, which break
up pura ̄n.ic contents into smaller pieces and arrange them in chronological order
so as to show historical development, Bailey takes the Pura ̄n.as as single literary
units, and exposes within them the semantic structures which shape their con-
tents, both the surface structure provided by the pañcalaks.an.aformula and the
deeper structure of “a bhaktiideology and its attendant praxis” (Bailey 1995: 15).
There have been some influential conferences on the Pura ̄n.as during the
1980s and 1990s. The University of Wisconsin’s Madison Conference on the
Pura ̄n.as in 1985 brought together an international group of scholars whose
papers led to the publication ofPura ̄n.a Perennisin 1993, while the Dubrovnik
International Conference on the Pura ̄n.as and Epics held in 1997 was the first of
a continuing series of gatherings. Its proceedings have already been published
under the title Composing a Tradition: Concepts, Techniques and Relationships
(Brockington and Schreiner 1999).
As the twenty-first century begins, the study of the Pura ̄n.as appears to be in
good health. No doubt as the century unfolds scholars will receive more and
more help from the compilation of electronic texts and other technological devel-
opments. Cooperation between text-historical and structuralist approaches may
result in a clearer understanding of those features of the Pura ̄n.as which today
are puzzling. But in the last analysis the Pura ̄n.as do not belong to the scholarly
community, and they will continue to be important even if the latter should
neglect them completely. Their rich and variegated mythology creates a total
cosmos in which the bhaktivalues of all forms of theistic Hinduism are preserved
and flourish. So long as even some of them continue to be recited and heard, so
long as the stories which they contain are retold and remembered, they will
embody and proclaim these values in the emerging global context in which the
planet’s religious traditions will share their insights with each other.
References
Bailey, Greg. 1995. Ganesapurana Part 1: Upasanakhana, Introduction, Translation and
Index.Purana Research Publications Tübingen, vol. 4, part I. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz
Verlag.
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