Mudgala Purana

The Mudgala Purana (Sanskrit:मुद्गल पुराणम्; mudgala purāṇam ) is a Hindu religious text dedicated to the Hindu deity Ganesha (Gaṇeśa). It is an upapurāṇa that includes many stories and ritualistic elements relating to Ganesha. The Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana are core scriptures for devotees of Ganesha, known as Ganapatyas (Gāṇapatya). These are the only two Purana that are exclusively dedicated to Ganesha.

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.

As of 2007 no "critical edition" had been issued for the Mudgala Purana. A "critical edition" of a Purana is a special type of scholarly edition in which many alternative readings from variant manuscripts have been reviewed and reconciled by scholars to produce a consensus text. If there is no critical edition, it means that individual editions may show significant variations in content and line numbering from one another. This is the case with the Mudgala Purana, so it is necessary to review multiple editions, which may differ from one another in significant ways. The most common edition currently available is Mudgala Purana ( both Sanskrit and Prakrut versions ) written by Late (Prof.) Dr. Sitaram Ganesh Desai Dr._Sitaram_Ganesh_Desai and published by Mudgala Puran Prakashan Mandal, Dadar, Mumbai . The Sanskrit edition is also available and published by Ganeshyogi Maharaj of Kempwad, Karnataka . For 32 forms of ganapati as described in Mudgala Purana: Thirty-two forms of Ganesha.

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