hAlAsyapurANa and hAlAsyarahasya

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 3/17/99 4:02:50 PM Central Standard Time, athr at LOC.GOV
writes:

> The Library of Congress has two Malayalam versions of the
>  Halasyamahatmya, which it identifies are from the Skandhapurana.  Do
>  you have any idea where if anywhere in published versions of the
>  Skandhapurana it might appear?  Of course, many works claimed to
>  belong to the SP are isolated works and not found in mss or printed
>  versions of it.

In "Sacred Marriage of a Hindu Goddess", p.29-31, W. P. Harman says, "Fro
about the ninth century on, many Tamil scholars began to develop the
unfortunate notion that if a literary work is (or was) in Sanskrit, it has to
be good. Positing a Sanskrit source for a work not in Sanskrit came to be a
writer's insurance policy, guaranteeing his document's acceptance by the "main
learned and religious traditions" (van Buitenan 1978a, 12).
....
I have concluded that the earliest extant work on Ziva's games in Madurai is
the work by Nampi. Thus, even if Nampi tells us, as indeed he does, that his
work has a Sanskrit antecedent, I am inclined not to believe him. I believe
that Nampi's is the earliest written version and that it is the basis of all
the otherversions--Sanskrit or Tamil-- available.

...Similarly, if the author of a Sanskrit text were using a Tamil antecedent
or model, by the normal rules of the game he would be well advised not to
admit it. Rather he would be wiser to name as a model another Sanskrit text,
or to insert his work judiciously into an already prestigious Sanskrit corpus,
such as the skandapurANa."

Thus, if it was added to SP, it must be a later addition. My interest in these
texts is due to them containing the story of ziva teaching grammatical sutras.

Regards
S. Palaniappan