[Advaita-l] bhAgavata purANa

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006, V. Krishnamurthy wrote:

> Namaste all
>
> The great Sage Shuka narrated the Bhagavatam in seven days to King 
> Parikshit and a large audience of silent listeners to the narration. 
> This happened 30 years after Krishna left this world.  The next saptAha 
> (seven-day rendering of the Bhagavatam) came 200 years after, by 
> Gokarna. The next one was by Sanatkumara to Narada, 30 years later.
>
> Suta Pauranika was one of the many who were in the audience at the first 
> saptAha. Because of his extraordinary powers of memory he was chosen by 
> a later gathering ( probably several hundreds of years later) at 
> Naimisaranya for recounting what he heard from Shuka on the banks of the 
> Ganges.  Vyasa wrote the PurAna after this.
>
> This is the traditional understanding.
>

See BP 1.4.3 where Shaunaka explicitly says Vyasaji is the author of the 
Bhagavata Purana.  He taught it to his son Shukadevaji who narrated  it 
to Suta the son of Romaharshana who narrated it to Maharshi Shaunaka and 
the other Rshis in Naimisharanya.

> A historical analysis of the dating is made in
> http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/encyclopedia/sb.htm

Like most things that come out of the Harekrishna camp, this site is 
wholly useless in any objective way.  A better source would be Volume 2: 
Epic and Sanskrit Religious literature in A History of Indian Literature 
edited by Prof. Jan Gonda.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>