Naciketas

[Amos Nevo]

I am grateful to vidyasankar Sundaresan for his clarification:
>
>The brahmANDa and skAnda purANa-s are convenient texts to which many a
>sundry myth (particularly a sthala-purANa) is ascribed. Given a story
>that claims to be derived from brahmANDa, there is approximately a 50%
>chance that it will be actually found in the currently available mss of
>the purANa.
>
>The statement "this is from the brahmANDa purANa" often really means,
>"this ought to be in the brahmANDa purANa". This does not necessarily
>mean that the story itself is suspect, although a lot of phony claims
>have been made. In any case, the Naciketas story probably predates the
>purANa.
>
>It might help to see if any of the standard commentaries on the kaTha
>upanishad quote details which they attribute to the brahmANDa purANa.
If
>Sankara, Rangaramanuja and Madhva (especially Madhva, who quotes more
>purANas, and more often than the other two) do not say so, there is a
>good chance that the tradition of deriving the Naciketas story from the
>brahmANDa purANa is a recent one. Also check if sAyaNa's commentaries
>say something in this regard.
>
>Vidyasankar

Actually the MSS of the story of Naciketas, mostly variations of the
name  "NAsiketopAkhyAnam", are recent versions of the ancient story from
the VrAha PurANa.
All the commentators that I know of - old and modern, Western and
Eastern - do not mention the recent story at all. Belloni-Filippi
translated the MSS found in the British Library and S. Krause, who
translated a Rajastani version of the story, refers to Belloni-Filippi.
So, as far as I know, in commentating on KaTHopaniSad, no one refers to
the recent versions of the story.
If anybody could enlighten me about the subject, I shall appreciate it.
Thanks in advance.

Amos Nevo
14/51 Bolivia St. Jerusalem
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Email: amnev at hotmail.com


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