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most recent to be not above three or four centuries old. In the present state of Hindu belief the Puránas exercise a very general influence. Some of them, or portions of them, are publicly read and expounded by Brahmans to all classes of people. Most Brahmans who pretend to scholarship are acquainted with two or more of them, and particular sections, as the Deví Máhátmya, are amongst the most popular works in the Sanskrit language. Prayers from them have been copiously introduced into all the breviaries; observances of feasts and fasts are regulated by them; temples, and towns, and mountains, and rivers, to which pilgrimages are made, owe their sanctity to legends for which the Puráñas or the Mahatmyas, works asserted, often untruly, to be sections of them, are the only authorities; and texts quoted from them have validity in civil as well as religious law. The determination of their modern and unauthenticated composition deprives them of the sacred character which they have usurped, destroys their credit, inpairs their influence, and strikes away the main prop, on which, at present, the great mass of Hindu idolatry and superstition relies. That the Puráñas represent in many instances an older, and probably a primitive scheme of Hinduism, is no doubt true; they have preserved many ancient legends; they have handed down all that the Hindus have of traditional history, and they furnish authoritative views of the essential institutions of the Hindus, both in their social and religious organisation. But in their decidedly sectarial
RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
