From the Vāyuprokta to the Vāyu and Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇas: Preliminary remarks towards a critical edition of the vāyuprokta Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa

Vielle, Christophe
(2005) Third Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas — Location: Dubrovnik (2.September.2002)

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This article deals with the texts of the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa and Vāyupurāṇa, manuscripts and editions, and traces the way back to the reconstitution of the classical vāyuprokta Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, their common source which itself used as a source an earlier Purāṇa called Vāyuprokta, the one mentioned in MBh 3,189.14. After a short comparison of the Calcutta(BI)/Bombay and Pune editions of the VāP, it exposes in details the hybrid character of a group of manuscripts on which the BḍP Bombay edition is based: the edition contains the BḍP text which can rightly be called vāyuprokta Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa (up to BḍP 2,3,20), continued in the Madhyamabhāga section of the BḍP by another much younger text (13th-14th century?) taken over from the Jaiminīyasaṃhitā (said "of the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, Madhyamabhāga") 61-98 (with the stories of Paraśurāma and Sagara). Moreover, the same manuscripts contain a lacuna in the middle of the story of Paraśurāma (14 adhyāyas), filled up in the Bombay edition with a new composition (in BḍP 2,3,30-44) full of tantric and kṛṣṇabhakti elements. The next part of the Bombay BḍP, adhyāyas 44-58 (Madhyamabhāga) is again transferred from the JaiSa, and does not belong to the original vāyuprokta BḍP. Without this double interpolation, the BḍP is more or less the same text as the VāP, with a common structure in four parts: Prakriyā-, Anuṣaṅga-, Upodghāta- and Upasaṃhāra-pāda. This is confirmed by the Calcutta edition of the BḍP, a version of the text limited to the first two pādas, which preserves nearly all the passages of the VāP which are absent from the Bombay edition of the BḍP. There is an Old Javanese version of the BḍP (about 1000 AD) also consisting of the two first pādas only, and in this respect close to the Calcutta edition of the BḍP. The pure complete BḍP manuscripts, very rare (maybe less than 15), possibly reflecting the classical vāyuprokta Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa more faithfully than the VāP mss., are enumerated. Self-references and references in other texts (classical authors, nibandhas) to a Purāṇa, to the brahmādīni purāṇāni, or to the 18 Purāṇas, are discussed in order to approximately date the first codified Purāṇa, which would be this vāyuprokta Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa, in the 4th century AD, beside the para-epic Mārkaṇḍeya-, and followed by the development of other, more Sectarian Purāṇas, such as the Viṣṇu- (6th century?), Viṣṇudharmottara- (7th century) and early Skanda- (6th-7th century). The appendices list the editions of the BḍP and VāP and give a detailed table of their concordance.
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Vielle, C. (2005). From the Vāyuprokta to the Vāyu and Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇas: Preliminary remarks towards a critical edition of the vāyuprokta Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa. In Petteri Koskikallio ed. (ed.), Epics, khilas, and Purāṇas: Continuities and ruptures. Proceedings of the Third Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas, September 2002 (p. p. 535-560). Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.