Geography of the puranas

Description

While the Puranas occupy an important place in the corpus of traditional Hindu beliefs, their significance as a major source-book on the mores and ideas of the Puranics is rarely understood. The Puranas, particularly the Vayu, supply a fund of geographical ideas, some of which strikingly close to those of our own time, that it may seem a real pity that scholars of Ancient Indian Geography should have left this fruitful field of research nearly unexplored. In this monograph Dr. S. M. Ali seeks to reconstruct the world of the Puranics, their notions about the Earth and the Universe, on the basis of the geographical data and ideas given in the Puranas. The result is astonishing as it is fascinating. The interpretations and the explanations are based on appropriate topographical maps and corresponding accounts in standard geographical works. The final chapter on (he cosmogony, cosmology and cosmography of the Puranics places the entire work in perspective. DR. S. MUZAITR All. Professor und Head of Department of General and Applied Geography, University of Sangar, Sagar, is one of the most distinguished geographers of this country. With a dodorate from London University and a Master's degree both in mathematics and geography Dr. Ali is the only Indian geographer who is also a Fellow of the National Institute of Sciences of India. He has published a number of papers in leading goo graphical journals and his work on Arab Geography, published in 1954, remains a classic to this day. Dr. Ali was elected President of the Council of Indian Geographers in 1956. He is also a Corresponding Member of the Commission on Applied Geography of the International Geographical Congress.