Muhammad in the Bhavishya Purana: Difference between revisions

The '''Bhavishya Purana''' (Sanskrit:भविष्य पुराण, literally "the future Purana") is one of the eighteen major Hindu Puranas. It is written in Sanskrit and attributed to Rishi Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas.<ref>For the Bhaviṣyat Purāṇa as one of the eighteen major puranas see: Winternitz, volume 1, p. 531.</ref> The title Bhavishya Purana signifies a work that contains prophecies regarding the future or a "history of the future."<ref>For the title signifying "a work which contains prophecies regarding the future" see: Winternitz, p. 567.</ref> Popular Indian Islamic preachers and apologists such as Dr. [[Zakir Naik]] often make the claim that the Hindu scriptures, the Bhavishya Purana in particular, predict the mission and life of Muhammad, and that this constitutes a miracle. This claim is a relatively recent invention, and is not often made outside of India to non-Hindus. The text of the purana itself is a complicated one; like most Hindu scriptures, linguistic features of the Sanskrit it was composed to points to a relatively early composition of the core of the text, but this was an oral, not a written, composition. The full text of the purana itself was put to writing at a relatively late date, and much of the material in it is are likely later accretions to the original core text. Although linguistic features of the core Sanskrit text do point to a relatively early composition date, the Puranas appear younger than the Vedas and the Mahabharata, and the attribution of all of these texts to Rishi Vyasa is almost certainly false.There do appear to be passages in the Bhavishya Purana  that that describe Muhammad, but some of these are hostile and appear to paint him as a mlecha, a dastardly foreigner, or even as a demon. Rather than being an actual example of a prophesy, most scholars view these references as an example of ''Vaticinium ex eventu'', a prophecy being placed in the mouth of a prophet by a writer composing after the fact, in order to attribute divine prophesy to his character.