Mudgala Purana - Date of The Work

Date of The Work

There is little agreement on the date of the Mudgala Purana. Phyllis Granoff reviews the internal evidence and concludes that the Mudgala was the last of the philosophical texts concerned with Ganesha R. C. Hazra suggested that the Mudgala Purana is earlier than the Ganesha Purana which he dates between 1100 and 1400 A.D. Granoff finds problems with this relative dating because the Mudgala Purana specifically mentions the Ganesha Purana as one of the four Puranas that deal at length with Ganesha. These are the Brahma, the Brahmaṇḍa, the Ganesha, and the Mudgala puranas. Courtright, says that the Mudgala Purana dates from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries but he gives no reason for this. Thapan (pp.30-33) reviews different views on the relative dating of these two works and notes that the Mudgala Purana, like other Puranas, is a multi-laid work. She says that the kernel of the text must be old and that it must have continued to receive interpolations until the 17th and 18th centuries as the worship of Ganapati became more important in certain regions.