PROBLEMS OF INDIAN RESEARCH 179
account of the chief pilgrimages and sacred rivers. And in the Vishnu Purana, in the stories of Dhruva and Prahlada, when compared with the infinitely superior popular versions, we have a key to the treatment which fiction and folklore would receive. As the theological exposition proceeds, one can almost see the Brahman teaching at the temple-door while the shades of evening gather, and ignoring every other consideration in his desire to put the highest philosophy into the mouth of Prahlad, or to pin a religious meaning to the astronomical picture of the child Dhruva pointed onwards by the Seven Rishis.
It would be clearly impossible for every village in the Gupta Empire to possess either a scholar learned in, or a copy of, the Mahabharata. But the scheme of culture comprised in the knowledge of the work known as the Vishnu Purana was not equally unattainable; and it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the book was planned or edited as a standard of common culture. If there be anything in this suggestion, a new importance will be conceded to the question of the province or district in which each separate Purana was produced. A single touch in the Vishnu Purana is sufficient to indicate its composition in the neighbourhood of an imperial capital, such as Pataliputra must have been. This is found in the story of Hiranyakasipu taking his little son on his .knee, when he had been under tuition for some time, and putting him through his catechism. One of the questions in
