BHAVISHYA PURANA

Muslims often point to the Hindu Scripture, e.g. the Bhavishya Purana, as proof of Muhammad's Prophethood. Aside from the problem of appealing to a polytheistic scripture, in order to establish the credibility of someone preaching monotheism, there is also a problem of the dating of the text.

"The Bhavishya Purana is a text that tells us of what will be. The word bhavishyati is the future tense of the verb bhu, meaning "to be." That is, bhavishyati literally means "will be." ...

Is it possible to date the composition of the Bhavishya Purana? Not with any degree of certainty.

The first references to this text can be found in the Apastambha Dharmasutra, a work dated not later than the 3rd century B.C. But the Purana itself contains references to Adam, Noah, Allah, Shankaracharya, Shivaji, and even Queen Victoria. You find it describing how Manu ascended the throne. But you also find it talking about the British building factories in Calcutta. Nineteenth century events do find a place in it.

What are we to make of all this?

Did the ancient narrators of pre-Christian times really forsee the future? Were the statements about Aurangazeb or Queen Victoria really predictions or prognostications?

Most scholars think otherwise. In their opinion, this is a text that has grown over a period of 2000 years starting from the 3rd or even the 4th century B.C. The suggested upper and lower limits of the period are 450 or 500 B.C. to 1850 A.D. In the course of this growth and evolution, later-day material was added to the original stuff that formed the core. What is more, the later-day material was added in the form of predictions for the future. Events of the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries were incorporated as if they were foreseen by the sages of the epic period. This device of collecting past events and passing them off as predictions is a literary evolution of a rather unique kind." The Bhavishya Purana, Introduction (New Delhi: D.K. Publications Ltd), 2000, pp 6-9.

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