PREFACE

have been added to it, and a large mass of original matter has been expunged from it so as to bring it within the compass of the eight thousand and eight hundred Slokas metrical verses, as laid down in the introductory chapter. Thus we see that the Pretakhanda the section concerning the departed spirits and the afterlife or Vishnu-dharmottara a supplementary treatise on the laws and rituals of Vishnu was added to it by way of an appendix, and the reason of these successive accretions to the text can be easily understood if we consider that, the Garuda Puranam one of the eighteen great Hindu scriptures, like the Agni referring to the Agni Purana, etc. although originally a compendium of the available Brahminical knowledge, and rituals, pursued and followed by the Vaishnava followers of the god Vishnu section of the community, came to gather in many tributaries from the other branches of Brahmanic thought and religion, as the distinction between the sect of Vishnu and other sects of S'iva Shiva and Sakti Shakti, or the Divine Mother etc., came to be less marked and pronounced, and the points of difference or antagonism between them were more rounded off.

Thus we see many Tantrik esoteric or ritualistic rites and Mantras sacred chants or formulas such as, the Tripurâ Vidyâ The Sacred Knowledge of the Three Cities, Nityaklinnâ Vidyâ The Sacred Rite of the Ever-Moist One were introduced into the Garuda Puranam, one of the Scriptural Puranas of Vaishnavism; and the Preta-khanda, which we find invariably appended to the Purana in many of the manuscripts, does but reflect the necessity of subsequently adding to it a treatise on funeral rites, or on punishment and reward after death according to one's deserts, only to enhance the utility of the work as a book of reference in every day life, as the members of the sect began to be more bigoted and averse to reading religious works, or Puranas dedicated to the tutelary gods of other sects.

It requires nothing more than an average intellect to detect that the part under reference (Preta-Khanda) is manifestly an interpolation a later addition not part of the original text, inasmuch as the subject has been already dealt with in chapters on S'raddha-vidhi rules for ancestral funeral rites, Papa-Chinha Lakshanam the study of the marks and signs of sin and Prayaschittâ atonement or penance, etc., and the insertion of a more detailed and elaborate dissertation on the subject under the style of Preta-Khanda is an unnecessary repetition and re-opening of a finished discourse (Samâpta Punarâtta-tâ the rhetorical fault of resuming a concluded topic) which is bad both in reason and rhetoric. We have