Here it will be profitable to make a slight digression from the main subject and discuss the meaning of history and symbol, and how the charge of the non-historicity of the Epic figures cannot affect the main purpose of the Epics. Perhaps it is a feeling of many that non-historicity means non-existence. It is our purpose here to show that this erroneous notion is based on a wrong view of history itself. There is a cosmic significance of things, in addition to the historical and isolated meaning which they seem to have in social life. The human mind has a habit of looking at events in a straight line and this linear march of events is normally regarded as history. This is what we call the three-dimensional perspective or the spatio-temporal vision of the mind-to look at objects as bodies, as existences cut off from others, in such a way that there cannot be any intrinsic or organic connection among them. This is the classical historical view. The events of political history have no organic connection. There appear to be sudden jumps, in space and time, of characters which cannot be predicted easily. But that this is not the truth of history will be clear to a true philosopher of history. The historical view takes account of the causal connection of events, while causation is not the whole truth of the universe. Arthur Eddington introduces a distinction between causation which is the commonsense meaning of the relation of cause and effect in which there is the notion of the temporal antecedence of cause to the effect, and what he calls causality which is the symmetrical relation of the totality of events in the universe, which is a complete system of reciprocally connected events. Whitehead holds a similar view when he considers reality to be of the nature of an organismic process. Here the three-dimensional or spatio-temporal view of history gives way to the truth of a universal situation, which though it may appear as extra-mental to individual observing centres, is involved in the very constitution of the observers, and hence incapable of observation at all. A necessity of thought need not be an uncontradictable truth. James Jeans observes: "We can no longer say that the past creates the present; past and present no longer have any objective meanings, since the four-dimensional continuum can no longer be sharply divided into past, present and future". "If we still wish to think of the happenings in the phenomenal world as governed by the causal law, we must suppose that these happenings are determined in some substratum of the world which lies beyond the world of phenomena."  

As the universe is a connected process and not a collocation of isolated objects hanging in space, no one thing or event can be said to be the cause of another thing or event, for, in an unbroken process, every part has to pervade and penetrate every other part, so that everything in it becomes a cause as well as an effect. Every event, thus, reflects a universal condition and does not stand as an element abstracted from the whole. Causation among things is to be understood as the individualistic reading of the consequences of an indivisible consciousness appearing as the witness of objects which have it as their existence and content. The function of this universal principle as an unbroken continuum appears, where it is manifest in individuals, as the law of causal relation. The dynamic self-expression of the Absolute in the world of objects involves among them a living connection which appears in this manner. Causation has a meaning in the empirical world, but is meaningless to the Absolute. The mechanistic senses of man cannot observe the teleological purpose hidden in the Universe, an aim towards which all evolution is directed.  

The story of Lila and Padma, in the Yogavasishtha, demonstrates the truth that an event can have several dates and locations. Every event is a universal event and is valid to the whole cosmos. The past, present and future have no absolute determinations of their own. An event may have a different significance altogether with a different space-time meaning in some other framework of reference. What is past need not be necessarily past for everyone, and this law applies to the present and future, also. Any event taken by itself and at a given moment of time may belong either to the past, present or future according to the space-time coordinate from which it is viewed. From the point of view of the Reality behind the Universe, an event is a universal process inseparable from the consciousness in which it occurs. Space-time is a relation and not existence. This world of space-time in which we live is not the only possible one, for there can be as many worlds, with as many space-times, as there are frames of reference or modes of consciousness. Our world-history, therefore, need not be an ultimate reality. When subjected to critical analysis, the reality of the historical existence of things, as we conceive it, vanishes like mist before the sun.  

What we understand to be history has a significance wider than that the historical level would permit. The crass notion of a historical being would perhaps be of a person or thing capable of being seen with the physical eye at the time when it existed. Perhaps the existence of someone who has never been seen by anyone would be an object of doubt as to his existence. As there is nobody today who can say that he has seen Rama or Krishna, for example, we are ready to doubt their reality. We seem to reject everything which cannot be empirically proved right now and here. But in this weddedness of ours to the historical dogma we seem to forget that history need not merely be a straight march of certain events in time but can comprehend situations and realities overstepping the limits of sensory phenomena.  

Is God a historical person? Perhaps the reason why his existence is often denied is because his being cannot be subjected to the test of empirical history. Is the world or the universe a historical entity? The solidness, the simple location, in short, the temporal historicalness of the contents of the world has been smashed down once for all, by the discoveries of the modern Theory of Relativity in physics, and its startling philosophic interpretations by such thinkers as Eddington and Whitehead. In this predicament one should really hesitate to give opinion against the historical existence of the personalities of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The perception of Valmiki and Vyasa ranged beyond the empirical view of history and looked at the universe from the point of view of being qua being. The Sages sang the history of the cosmos, which an uninitiated mind cannot comprehend. Any attempt by the layman to probe into their implications would be like a science student of a secondary school trying to read the discoveries of Einstein for himself and understand them. No one who is incapable of a universal perspective of things can appreciate the truths presented in these Epics, which proclaim to the world the outer meaning of the inner reality revealed in the Upanishads.  

The history of a thing is not what happens to that thing in a particular country or village, but what it is in creation as a totality. We do not exist merely in a country; we exist in the cosmos. That some of us are visitors, some are pilgrims, some have arrived from foreign countries, and some have this or that character, quality or duty, is a description of our personalities; but we are all more than this descriptive form. Our status in the cosmos is our true history, and no study of a person can be complete or be free from doubt unless it is studied from the cosmical standpoint. Taking things bit by bit, in isolation, is not the method of a true historical study. The biography of a person, at least according to the viewpoint of seers like Vyasa, should include the story of body, mind and spirit together, and not merely of the sociological existence of the body. As our social relations today touch all nations, our spirits touch all the planes of being. This is the wider view of history, in which questions like "Did Krishna exist?" cannot arise. When creation is taken in its total perspective, everything in it becomes a historical reality.  

To study universal history we require a different apparatus of understanding from that we need when we read European and Indian history. If, as the poet said, we cannot touch a flower in our garden without disturbing a star in the heavens, no one's reality can be evaluated without reference to his wider meaning in the cosmos. This is true not only of human beings but also of the smallest atom in the world or the gods in Paradise.  

Apart from this inner truth of history and the reality of a person from this standpoint, there is nothing to disprove the historical existence of the important personalities of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata even from the point of view of our own physical view of earthly history. That we have no means to adduce as proof of their existence need not imply that they did not walk on this earth at some distant date.

The Puranas are chronicles containing ancient history, mythology and longer or shorter discourses in religion, philosophy, Yoga, mystical attainments and spiritual realisation, and many other kindred subjects.  

Large sections of the Puranas are devoted to glorifications of the exploits of Vishnu, Siva, Devi, Ganesha and Skanda, either in their original forms or through their manifestations. Other deities such as Brahma, Surya and Vayu occupy prominent places in the Puranas and receive great attention though not in the same measure as the five mentioned. The other themes are also widely spread through the Puranas in greater or lesser emphasis. The Puranas also describe at length such other subjects as medicine, art, rhetoric and literary appreciation, grammar, ethics, politics, ritual, social laws of the castes and the stages of life, pilgrimage to holy places, religious vows and observances, the nature and value of charitable gifts, and the philosophy of Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta in all their variegatedness. Their vivid biographies of stalwarts who lived and moved in the world as paragons of sagely wisdom, prowess and moral toughness, devotion to God and self-sacrifice give a concrete picture of the universal truths which they elucidate in a homely but magnificent style. The classification of human conduct and duty into the four Purusharthas or aims of existence is a master-stroke of the ethico-philosophical concept of ancient India, and it formed the groundwork of the great systems of law embodied in the Dharmasastras or Smritis.  

The gods, Rishis, kings, saints and moral heroes described in the Puranas have an exceptional educative value to the human mind. As regards the historicity of the personalities of the Puranas, our observations on those mentioned in the Epics have to be called back to memory, for the Puranas are only an amplification of those themes which are concisely hinted in the Epics during the course of the narration of their main subjects.  

The major Puranas are eighteen in number and are classified, generally, into three categories of six each, dedicated to the glorification of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. The other gods also find their proper places in the recountings of these texts in suitable contexts. As far as the essential content, philosophical profundity and religious impressiveness of the Puranas are concerned, the most important among them are the Vishnu Purana and Srimad-Bhagavata. The Srimad-Bhagavata, in particular, deals with the creation of the world, following the trend of Sankhya and Vedanta; the various incarnations or Avataras of Vishnu, which are twenty-two or twenty-four in number (including the ten great Avataras); the dynasties of gods and demons, sages and kings, as following from the original progenitors issuing from the Creator; the lives of great devotees of God such as Dhruva, Rishabhadeva, Jadabharata, Ajamila, Prahlada, Gajendra, Ambarisha, Sudama and the like; philosophical discourses on Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta, especially those delivered by Kapila to Devahuti and Sri Krishna to Uddhava; astronomy and geography; the principles of the Dharmas of castes (varna) and orders of life (ashrama); and a description of time cycle (kalpa), the four ages (yuga) and the four kinds of dissolution of things (pralaya), etc. But the most striking and enchanting section of the Bhagavata is that which describes the life of Krishna. The forceful presentation of the great Avatara has become the source of a marvellous development of the various Bhakti schools in India. This part of the biography of Krishna, though referring to the events of the Mahabharata, carefully avoids the details of his public life as a statesman, warrior and teacher, which is so colourfully portrayed in the Epic. The chapters describing the Rasa Lila or the amorous dance of the lasses of Vrindavana with Krishna as a small boy, his childish pranks of earlier days with a divine import hidden behind them; his marvellous feats of strength and valour striking awe upon everyone even while he was an adolescent, have given rise to a vast literature by devout poets in later times and their spirit pulsates through the emotions of ardent lovers of God even till this day. The Puranas, backed up by the Epics, with their compelling force and grandeur of mien, form an efficient mouthpiece of the Vedas and Upanishads.