Padma Purana Swarga Khanda - Ashoke Chatterjee Shastri

THE SVARGAKHANDA OF THE PADMA-PURANA for the first time critically by PROF. DR. ASOKE CHATTERJEE SASTRl, M.A., (Double),

D. Phil., D. Lit., MahopSdhyaya, Kavyatirtha, Vedatlrtha, Purg,g.atlrtha, PracmaSmritillrtha, NavyaSmrititirtha, Dip. Ger., Vacaspati,

Printed by Ramashanker at the Tara Printing Works, Varanasi and Published by Shri Ramesh Chandra De, General Secretary, All-India Kashiraj Trust, Fort Ramnagar, Varanasi (India).

In the history of Sanskrit studies in modern India when we entered the present advanced age of the printing press, one of the first things which attracted the attention of scholars as well as lovers of Sanskrit was naturally the need to have printed editions of the great Sanskrit classics.

The pride of place in age as well as in achievement has to be given to the Editio Princeps of the greatest book of India, and possibly of the whole world—the Sanskrit Mahabharata, which was brought out by the scholars under the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta during 1834 to 1839. Prior to that Sir William Jones, who discovered Sanskrit for himself and for the western world had brought out an edition of a small work, a classic no doubt—the Rtusarnhara of Kalidasa, a short poem of descriptive and lyrical character giving a picture of the seasons according to the old Indian tradition, which he brought out from Calcutta in 1792 in Bengali script. But after the first edition of the Mahabharata, attention of the scholarly world, both in India and abroad was centered on this aspect of Sanskrit studies, namely proper editions of the great books in the language. The first edition of the Mahabharata was not a critical edition—it simply followed some of the manuscripts which the editors could lay their hands upon, and it was a good edition and it served its purpose for a good many decades. But it set the tone. Then we have that Magnum Opus of German Sanskrit scholarship when Friedrich Max Mueller from Germany, who had settled in England, edited and published for the first time the oldest book of India and of the Indo-European world, the Rgvedasarrihita with the commentary of Say ana in six volumes (1849-1870).

This was the Editio Princeps, the first edition ever printed of this great work, and it was also a critical edition. Max Mueller tried to establish a correct text on the basis of not only manuscripts which were available to him, but also from a number of “Jiving manuscripts”, i.e., Vedic scholars of the old type in India who had the entire text of the Vedas by heart. They also served Max Mueller for the purpose of collation of the text with the help of manuscripts. After that of course we have the glorious history of Sanskrit publications by scholars both in India and abroad. Hem Chandra Vidyaratna of Calcutta brought out an edition of the Rdmayana based on Bengali manuscripts. The Italian scholar Gaspare Gorrcssio brought out the first edition, which may be described as fairly critical, of the Ramayana also from Paris with an Italian translation during the years 1843 to 1850. Sufficient care was taken by scholars, both in India and outside India, to give good texts and several Indian publishing houses were also established, e. g., the publishing house started by Jxvananda Vidyasagara in Calcutta, by Haridasa Gupta with his Chaukhamba Sanskrit Series from Banaras, the Nirnayasagara Press of Bombay which was ably run by Tukaram Javaji, the Anandasrama Press in Poona, the Vanivilasa Press of Shrirangam, and a number of very distinguished publishing houses all over India. Then the Asiatic Society and other Institutions also took up this work, namely, the Bibliotheca Indica Series of the Asiatic Society with its Sanskrit publications, the Trivandrum Sanskrit Series, the Theosophical Society of Adyar in Madras, the Publication House of the University of Bangalore and subsequently almost all over India we have Institutions connected with Universities or learned Societies with research plans and publishing houses for Sanskrit books, which all combined to give proper publicity to the treasures of Sanskrit.

The vastness of Sanskrit literature is astonishing, and one of the most important aspects of the literature of Sanskrit is its unique series of Puranas and Upapuranas which came after the Mahabharata and the Ramdyana. In 1918 the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute of Poona took up, under the inspiration of the great Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar a great critical work on Sanskrit, unique of its kind and the first to be undertaken in that scale in India— a Critical Edition of the Mahabharata- This was placed in charge of V. S. Sukthankar, one of the great Sanskrit scholars of the present age in India, and he initiated certain canons of criticism in the editing of old texts which were accepted as sane and correct by the learned world everywhere; and under his initiation and guidance the Mahabhdrata has finally come out in a unique critical edition from the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute of Poona. It has been a great feat of Indian scholarship where we have a combination of the old Sanskiit learning with the modern methods of literary criticism and text editing. Sanskrit manuscripts from all over India, and sometimes manuscripts which had gone outside India, were collected, ancillary literature in the shape of the versions of the Mahabharata which were available in countries outside India like Siam and Java, were also laid under requisition, and the result has been that this great edition of the Mahabharata has been accepted as a sort of model to follow. Other Universities and Institutions have taken it up, e.g., apart from other editions of the Ramayana, the critical edition of the Ramayar^a of Valmiki has been taken up, along the Mahabharata lines, by the Oriental Research Institute of Baroda, and the Bhagavata-pur aria has been taken up by the University of Gujrat in Ahmedabad. The Puranas like the Tantras were at first neglected.

But the unique value of the Purayas has been expressed by an observation in Sanskrit which has been accepted as the motto of the Parana publishing section of the All-India Kashiraj Trust, namely Atma Puraqar(i Vedanam. The Puranas are not a later aberration of the Indian mind—it is rather a complement and a fulfilment of the Vedas, in the evolution of a Brahminical culture which had its uninterrupted development from the Vedas down to the Tantras.

The All- India Kashiraj Trust, which owes its origin to the enlightened spirit and the munificence of Maharaja Shri Vibhuti Narayan Singh of Banaras, has among its multifarious activities for the strengthening and propagation of the Brahminical culture of India, begun its work in the Parana Publishing Department. It was able to enlist the help and support of a number of distinguished scholars from all over India and also from abroad. Emulating the critical edition of the Mahahharata the Trust has taken upon itself the great task of bringing out as many of the Puranas as possible. Some of these Puranas are very voluminous works and they are of an encyclopaedic character embodying all that the Hindu world has thought and done during at least 2500 years, if not more. If the Mahahharata runs up to 200 thousand verses, and the Ram ay ana to 48 thousand verses, one has not carefully computed the total number of verses to which the entire body of the 18 Puranas would run. There aie some Puranas which are not so long.

But there are Puranas like the Skanda-purana which comes up tc over 75,000 verses and the Padma-purana which extends to 55,000 verses. They present a veritable tropical jungle. In editing the Puranas one becomes bewildered and loses his way meeting with the various readings in the different manuscripts which are to be found in all parts of India, The task of finding out a critical text of any of these Puranas, particularly the voluminous one would almost be superhuman.

Yet this task is worth all the labour of the best Sanskrit scholarship in the country. It is a challenge and the Kashiraj Trust Purana Publishing Department has taken it up. They have been steadily doing this work following the modern critical methods of text editing as they have been for the first time established for the Mahahharata at Poona, and their first great publication which has added a great kudos to Indian scholarship has already been completed and placed before the learned world in India and outside India—the Vamana-pwaqa which is of course not one of the bigger Puranas 3 in the year 1967, and was released before the 2/th International Congress of Orientalists at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the U.S A, It was subsequently followed by an English translation. The Editor, Shri Ananda Swarup Gupta, M. A., Shastri, did his work very creditably. One might say that another great Sanskrit work has been made available to science in a critical edition.

The same editor has also given a very fine critical edition, taking the help from Prof. Dr. Asoke Chatterjee Sastri for some of the sections.

The third venture in the line of the Puranas is the present work which has been entrusted to Prof. Dr. Asoke Chatterjee Sastri This is an edition of the Svarga-Khanda of the Padma-purana. The Padma-purana 3 as sa-id before, is bigger even than the Ramayana There are quite a number of uncritical editions—popular “Bazaar” editions which have been published by different presses in India in both Nagarl and Bengali characters. These editions may be described as giving a common vulgate version, and there has been a great deal of diversity in the text.

It has been noticed that the Svarga-Khanda (one of the six or five Khandas which are found in the printed editions), has got some unique features. The published editions give one kind of text, and the Padma-purana has not at all been critically edited in any of its Khavas Prof. Chatterjee while taking up this work discovered that there is a total difference in its contents in the Svarga-Khand,a between the manuscripts of it in the Bengali character and manuscripts in Devanagarl and other characters, as well as printed editions. The reason for this has got to be enquired into.

He has found that the Bengali manuscripts give one fully consistent particular version of the Svarga-Khanda, which is presented in this book in Devanagarl characters, taken over from manuscripts in the Bengali script.

Dr. Asoke Chatterjee has collected and collated as many as seven manuscripts, all in the Bengali script, of this Svarga-Khanda (of which two he has been able to find in Oxford and Marburg). He has made a detailed study of all these manuscripts. One of which is unique in this respect that it gives the date when it was copied (the manuscript found at Sibpur in Howrah District in West Bengal). The editor has noted the orthographic characteristics of all these manuscripts and has sought to group them, particularly the Marburg and Oxford manuscripts.

The editor has also sought to find out the provenance or origin of this unique Bengali recension. He has noted some specifically Bengali idioms which are to be found in this text, although in a Sanskritised form, and there is frequent mention of some of the smaller rivers and rivulets in Bengal. The story o[ Bhagiratha’s birth, particularly the suggested etymology of the name, Bhaglratha, is found in these Bengali manuscripts only, in the same form as in this version of the Svarga-Khanda. All these things can only suggest the connexion of this version of the Svarga-Khanda with Bengal.

The contents of this Bengal recension of the SvargaKhanda, as given in this edition, may be compared with the Svarga-Khanda contents in the vulgate edition of the Padmapuraqa, e. g, in a book like the Astadasa-purana-darpana, giving a full list of the contents of all the Pur anas, section by section and chapter by chapter for each Parana as given by Pandit Jwalaprasad Misra Vidyavaridhi of Moradabad (published by Ksemaraja ShriKrishnadasa, from Srlvehkatesvara Press, Bombay, in Samvat 1962), and in the earlier printed editions of the Padma-pura^a. Towards the end of his very learned and very comprehensive introduction Prof. Chatterjee has noted the grammatical peculiarities and the metre of the Svarga-Khanda. I here is quite a lot of non-Paninian forms in this work. This, together with the fact that the metre has not been carefully handled, a hemistich of an Anus.tup line often showing either more or less than 8 aksaras and in the Upajati metre also we have 12 and even 10 letters-one letter more or less than the 11 for each pada shows a slipshod use of Sanskrit, and it must have been composed by persons who acquired just only a nodding acquaintance with Sanskrit. It also suggests rather lateness of the composition.

I am very happy to find that this Bengal recension of the Svarga-Khanda of the Padmapurana, as published under the auspices of the Kashiraj Trust has been very well edited, and it reflects great credit on the editor, Prof. Asoke Chatterjee Sastri. This work will have its own importance in the study of the Puranas as something which has relation with the folk-literature of medieval India. In the series of Parana text which is being published by the Kashiraj Trust, the Svarga-Khanda of the Padma-purana as presented here will also have its place of honour. Virtually this work amounts to the first editing of what may be described as a new Parana text, and the editing, with the care, and the learned scholarship and the attention to details It displays makes it a valuable piece of research in Purd.nct literature.

Important and interesting as it is, the large Purana literature is also bewildering, almost hopelessly so, in its textual problems. It is clear that in the case of several Puranas the original texts do not survive in entirety or even in part and what now passes under the name of a particular Purana is not the old text of that name. The two primary causes of this situation are: one, the loss of texts due to various circumstances connected with the destruction of manuscripts and the efforts to salvage and reconstruct the texts and two, the wilful revision of the texts under the increasing tempo of sectarian enthusiasm. It is a great pity that the integrity and authenticity of the ancient texts got affected; but the texts as we have cannot for that reason be ignored, for they are products of a historical and cultural process and the material as it is has its own intrinsic significance for the age and trend it reflects Each text purporting to be a particular Purana or a part of it therefore deserves its own critical study as a literary, religious and cultural document.

The Padma-purana > which appears to be one of the largest is known in two recensions, the Bengali and the Devan agar i, neither of which represents the old text of that name. An analysis of the Padma -texts as available in print or mss. has been given by Hazra and following him the present author, Dr- Asoke Chatterjee Ssstri has taken the critical studies of the textual materials relating to this Puraqa further in several papers of his in the Purana Bulletin and also in the present publication.

The Padma mss. show a division of the text into Parvans and another into Kha?idas i the two not being altogether unrelated. In the Khan4a -series itself, there is mention of five Khavas and also of six Khandas. One of these the Svarga-khanda is taken up for critical edition and study in thesejpages. The edition is based on seven mss.

The Svarga-khanda had attracted some extra attention because of its account of the Sakuntala -story on which some scholars, e. g-, Winternitz thought that Kalidasa borrowed from this Parana. In the reconstruction of Puranic texts that took place in the end of the classical period, or in their revisions in the later periods, the redactors, it is now clear, used oftenTCalidasa’s works The great poet’s works, besides being the high water-mark of poetic excellence, were also the authentic embodiment of the traditions of Hinduism and Indian culture, and being based on the epics and the myths, represented the ancient tradition which later writers relied and drew upon. 1 As I have shown on more than one occasion, several Puranic texts, major and minor, draw upon Kalidasa. The present editor is therefore correct when he holds the Svarga-khanda of the Padma as the borrower from Kalidasa- He has analysed the text further and shown its indebtedness to the two epics and its mention of other wellknown texts. He has also shown its late date and sectarian affiliation.

Prof. Dr. Asoke Chatterjee Sastrl has accomplished a useful piece of work in the field of Puranic studies and the Purana Department of the All-India Kashiraj Trust which His Highness the Maharaja of Banaras, Shri Vibhuti Narayan Singh, has established for the furtherance of research in this neglected field, will, I hope provide a forum for our younger scholars like the present editor, who are rightly taking increasing interest in this branch of inexhaustible research material.

1, I have enlarged on this theme in a paper on ‘Sanskrit Poetry and Indian Thought’ in the Dr. C. D. Deshmukh Commemoration Volume (pp 458-482) to be ssued shortly.

The familiar list of the eighteen Puranas invariably includes the Padma-purana by name and does not give any substitute for it. Thus the KUrma, Lihga, Bhagavata, Markandeya, Shiva, Skanda and other mahapuranas offer in some form or other a list of the Puranas which includes the Padma-purana.

It is known that the theory of the early origin of the extant Padma-purana finds strong support in its association with the pre-Tantric Brahma-sect which is prominently reflected in the few chapters preserved in the Shrishtikhanda from an earlier form of the work. During different ages, the major bulk of the Padma-purana underwent radical changes. Quite a large number of chapters were occasionally omitted, rewritten or enlarged; sometimes even one entire khanda was renovated. This was mostly done by the different sectarian elements who tried to wipe out the age-old tradition of their sharing of common features. The result was the bifurcation of the entire Padma-purana, which produced two versions—different from each other in their character and contents. These may be described as the (i) Devanagarl recension and the (ii) Bengal recension.

It is needless to point out that the Devanagarl recension has been published on more occasions than one, although none can claim to be critical. The Bengal recension on the other hand, has never been published, not to speak of its critically being edited. I, for the first time, have tried to study the different khandas of the Padmapurana in its Bengal recension from its extant manuscripts.

First of all, I have selected Svargakhanda as a special subject of my study. This khanda is unique in many respects especially it offers to solve the age-old problem of Kalidasa's indebtedness to the Padma-purana, or vice versa so far the Sakuntala-episode is concerned. Apart from its importance, its size is also not negligible. It consists of forty chapters and 2875 verses. I am fully justified, I believe, in taking up the Svargakhanda exclusively as a separate subject of research.

Collection of a number of manuscripts is one of the primary needs of such a type of specialised study. While doing post-doctorate work in the University of Marburg, West Germany, I had an opportunity to procure a number of manuscripts of the Svargakhanda through the kind endeavour of Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Rau, director, Indischostasiatishes Seminar, Marburg University. He not only helped me in the collation of the manuscripts bur also gave sympathetic and valuable advice whenever necessary.

I am extremely grateful to Prof Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee and Prof. Dr- V. Raghavan for their illuminating Prolegomena and Foreword.

It is a pleasure to record my heart-felt thanks to the authorities of the All-India Kashiraj Trust specially to its Pranapurusha, His Highness The Maharaja of Banaras and Shri Ramesh Chandra De, His ever-agile secretary who spared no pains in getting this work through the press.

A few errors or misprints in the following pages could not be avoided in spite of my best efforts. No one is more conscious than myself about my own limitations. I can only say that I have made an honest effort to carefully edit this for the first time and throw some new light on a few problems of the Padma-purana. It is for the scholarly world to judge how far I have been successful in my attempt.

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