The Sraddhasagara of Kulluka Bhatta

Summary

This study investigates the authenticity of a rare Sanskrit text titled ‘Sraddhasagara’. Scholars had cited it as an authoritative treatise on funeral rites, but the author discovered that the manuscript at the Calcutta Sanskrit College is a modern transcript written on paper watermarked Ruse & Turners 1824, implying it was produced around 1828file:///home/oai/share/563027_compressed-117-200.pdf#:~:text=The%20Sraddhasagara%20of%20Kulluka%20Bhatta,charge%20of%20a%20celebrated%20scholar. The supposed author, Kulluka Bhatta, lived in the late thirteenth centuryfile:///home/oai/share/563027_compressed-117-200.pdf#:~:text=_contemporary%20of%20the%20great%20social,D. The article shows that more than half of the ‘Sraddhasagara’ is copied verbatim from Silapani’s ‘Sraddhaviveka’ and that the rest contains errors and inconsistent readingsfile:///home/oai/share/563027_compressed-117-200.pdf. It criticises scholars who accepted the work at face value and notes that Kulluka’s genuine writings never mention such a treatise. By analysing watermarks, comparing textual sources and reviewing catalogues, the author demonstrates that the manuscript is a deliberate forgery meant to deceive collectorsfile:///home/oai/share/563027_compressed-117-200.pdf#:~:text=The%20Sraddhasagara%20of%20Kulluka%20Bhatta,charge%20of%20a%20celebrated%20scholarfile:///home/oai/share/563027_compressed-117-200.pdf. The exposure of this fraud has implications for the study of Hindu law: citations from the ‘Sraddhasagara’ should be disregarded and the date of Kulluka Bhatta reassessed using genuine evidence.