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221 khandas, viz. 1 st, Mahesvara khanda; 2 nd, Vaishnava khanda; 3 rd, Brahma khanda; 4 th, K'as'i khanda; 5 th, Avanti khanda; 6 th, Nagara khanda; 7 th, Prabhasa khanda. Of these the MS. under notice includes only a portion of the first part. Both the Skanda and the Narada have been named and their extent in verses given by Chand in the Prithviraya Rayasa of the 12 th century, and both have been quoted by Vallala Sena in his Danasagara. The seven parts together would not make up more than 81,000 verses, and the bulk of these may be accepted to be considerably older than the 11 th century. In the time of Professor Wilson, these facts were not known; he was therefore induced to take the Skanda Purana or its different khandas to be much more modern. The following is his account of this work.. "The Skanda Purana is that in which the six-faced deity (Skanda) has related the events of the Tatpurusha Kalpa, enlarged with many tales, and subservient to the duties taught by Maheswara. It is said to contain eighty-one thousand one hundred stanzas: so it is asserted amongst mankind. "It is uniformly agreed that the Skanda Purana, in a collective form, has no existence; and the fragments, in the shape of Samhitas, Khandas, and Mahatmyas, which are affirmed, in various parts of India, to be portions of the Purana, present a much more formidable mass of stanzas than even the immense number of which it is said to consist. The most celebrated of these portions, in Hindustan, is the Kasi Khanda, a very minute description of the temples of Siva in or adjacent to Benares, mixed with directions for worshipping Mahes' wara, and a great variety of legends explanatory of its merits and of the holiness of Kas'i. Many of them are puerile and uninteresting; but some are of a higher character. The story of Agastya records, probably, in a legendary style, the propagation of Hinduism in the south of India; and, in the history of Divodasa, king of Kas'i, we have an embellished tradition of the temporary depression of the worship of Siva, even in its metropolis, before the ascendancy of the followers of Buddha. There is every reason to believe the greater part of the contents of the Kasi Khanda anterior to the first attack upon Benares by Mahmud of Ghizni. The Kas'i Khanda alone contains fifteen thousand stanzas. "Another considerable work ascribed, in Upper India, to the Skanda Purana, is the Utkala Khanda, giving an account of the holiness