Origin and Growth of the Puranic Text Corpus

by Petteri Koskikallio and Bakkar Hans T.

The papers collected in this volume are the outcome of the Purana panel of the 12th world sanskrit conference held in Helsinki in July 2003 envisaged to explore departures from the original Purana texts. They mainly focus on the original Skandapurana which lends itself well to a study of the origins and growth of the Purana texts and the religious developments that they reflect.The sequence of the articles of this book has a purpose although each one of them can be read in itself also. The first part of Bakker`s contribution may be seen as a kind of introduction to the subject. The second part deals with a section of the text in which the differentiation into recension does not make much difference. The contributions of Torzsok and Harimoto focus on the transmission of the Purana and its development into different recensions. Hans T. Bakker holds the Gonda chair of hinduism in the sanskrit tradition and Indian Philosophy at the university of Groningen. Among his earlier publication are Ayodhya (1986), The Vakatakas (1997) and the Skandapurana Vol. 1 (1998). He is the editor of the Groningen Oriental studies and co-editor of Indo-Iranian Journal.