Date
The bulk of the text is derived from two traditions, the pañcalakṣaṇa tradition, that is, the "five marks" of the Purana corpus one of which is vaṃśa "genealogy", and stories about the life of Krishna as a herdsman. The latter portion presents the earliest source of Krishna's early life among the cowherds (apart from the Buddhist Ghata Jataka) and his affairs with the gopis, presenting him as a tribal hero.
The text is complex, containing layers that may go back to the 1st or 2nd centuries BCE. The origin of this appendix is not precisely known but it is apparent that it was a part of the Mahabharata by the 1st century CE because "the poet Ashvaghosha quotes a couple of verses, attributing them to the Mahabharata, which are now only found in the Harivamsa" (Datta 1858).
Hopkins considers Harivaṃśa the latest parva of Mahabharata. Hazra has dated the Purana to the 4th century CE on the basis of the description of Rasa lila in it. According to him, the Visnu Purana and the Bhagavata Purana belong to the 5th century CE and 6th century CE respectively. According to Dikshit, the date of Matsya Purana is the 3rd century CE. When we compare the biography of Krishna, the account of Raji and some other episodes as depicted in the Harivaṃśa, it appears to be anterior to the former. Therefore the Viṣṇu parva and the Bhaviṣya parva can be dated to at least the 3rd century CE.
By its style and contents, the Harivaṃśa parva appears to be anterior to the Viṣṇu parva and Bhaviṣya parva. The verses quoted by Asvaghosa belong to this parva. On this basis, we can safely assume the Harivaṃśa parva (except for the later interpolations) to be at least as old as the 1st century CE.
Read more about this topic: Harivamsa
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