After completing my previous article { When the Source Is Unclear, Can the Message Still Matter?1], I found myself returning to a persistent thought: how much of what we call “Scripture” or “sacred text” is actually based on facts? Or, more provocatively—how many of these so-called facts were fabricated?
As I reflected further, I realized that almost all scripture and religious literature we have inherited are largely built upon layers of what might rightly be called fabricated facts.
Let me begin with India. Most ancient Indian authors did not leave their names on their works. The names we now associate with many texts were given later by tradition. If I began listing examples, it would be too long—but let me limit myself to just a few.
Tradition attributes several hundred works to Adi Sankara. However, scholars have narrowed the list of genuine works to fewer than ten.2 Many other works were written by different authors and later attributed to Sankara, often to lend them authority. Take, for example, the famous Bhaja Govindam. Even official publications from respected institutions like the Ramakrishna Math attribute only the first twelve stanzas to Sankara, with the rest composed by his disciples. Yet, when my father quoted any stanza from the text, he would confidently assert, as “Sankara sang like this.”
This trend was not limited to devotional poetry. If someone wanted to promote a theological, social, or political idea, they could insert it into an epic like the Mahabharata, placing it on the lips of a revered character.3 That’s why compiling the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata was such a herculean task. Scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute had to make difficult choices on which verses to accept and which to reject.4
The same challenge arises with the Upanishads. While scholarly consensus generally accepts 16 as the principal Upanishads, even authoritative figures like Dr. Radhakrishnan included 18 in his commentary.5 As Prof. Daya Krishna observed, deciding which texts are śruti (revealed) and which are smṛti (remembered) is a vexed question, especially when new Upanishads continued to be composed well into the 13th century.6
Consider also the curious case of the Allopanishad (Allah Upanishad), a Sanskrit text written during the reign of Akbar to legitimize Islamic theological concepts in a Vedic framework.7 Such examples show that textual production was often driven by political and theological motivations.
Even the Puranas are not immune. The Skanda Purana, for instance, is notorious for its numerous additions, some as recent as the sixteenth century. Wendy Doniger referred to it as a “scrap-bag” of undeserved salvation.8 The Tamil term “kandal puranam” (worn-out cloth) humorously encapsulates how unreliable some traditions themselves regarded this text.
This issue is not limited to Indian traditions. Consider the Bible. Though Protestants and Catholics both regard the Bible as authoritative (with Catholics placing the Church above the Scripture in final authority), discrepancies remain. For instance, many psalms are traditionally called “Psalms of David,” though scholars agree many were written by others.
In the New Testament, numerous verses and even entire books have been challenged by scholars like Bart Ehrman. His works Forged and Misquoting Jesus demonstrate how certain portions of Scripture were added later to support emerging doctrines.9
And it’s not just ancient texts. Even in the 20th and 21st centuries, once authors like Agatha Christie became household names, books began appearing under their names—sometimes legally, sometimes not. In many cases, estates have authorized new works using famous characters, clearly crediting the actual authors (as with the Agatha Christie estate approving new Poirot novels by Sophie Hannah).10 Readers are generally aware that these are continuations, not originals. But there have also been cases of unethical or unauthorized usage—such as ghostwritten or AI-generated books falsely attributed to famous authors—misleading readers and undermining trust. If such confusion and fabrication can occur today under copyright law and global media scrutiny, how much more should we expect it from centuries-old religious or philosophical texts, shaped by oral traditions, copied by hand, and reinterpreted through generations?
So then, who decides what is authentic and what is fake or fabricated? This question becomes particularly critical when theological constructs and personal faith are pinned on texts later proven inauthentic. How do we respond when the very foundations of our beliefs come under scrutiny?
Now add to this the avalanche of fake news and AI-generated content. Although technology has amplified the scale, the tendency to fabricate information is nothing new. It has always been a human habit. The problem becomes serious when such fake information, like manipulated videos, endangers lives—as in cases of mob lynching triggered by disinformation.
That said, not all fabricated content is harmful. Some exaggerated or hypothetical claims can still be valuable if approached with discernment. If such content leads us to engage with verified, printed scholarly sources—even those that are themselves based on layered, sometimes contradictory traditions or to use a sophisticated term ‘Scholarly guess’ based on assumptions—then reading becomes a reflective exercise rather than blind acceptance.
But if one insists on strictly accepting only what is perfectly authentic, especially in the realm of religious tradition, then one may end up peeling an onion—layer after layer—never reaching the seed. The only thing such an exercise is guaranteed to bring is tears. Ironically, that may still serve a purpose. At least it clears the eyes.
So when we peel the onion of scripture, even if we do not find the core, may the tears we shed help us see more clearly.
Ashram, June 17, 2025
1 https://dayanandbharati.in/when-the-source-is-unclear-can-the-message-still-matter/
2 The list of the writings in his name comprises 433 titles, 107 of which merely duplicate or overlap with another 69; 219 do not enjoy unanimous recognition by his school, whereas 214 do. Modern scholars, however, reject most of them as spurious. Today, they usually agree that the following are genuine:
- The commentaries (bhāṣya) on nine Upaniṣads:
Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chāndogya, Aitareya, Taittirīya, Īśa, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka; - The commentary on the Bhagavad-gītā;
- The commentary on the Brahma– or Vedānta-sūtra;
- A non-commentarial treatise: the Upadeśa-sāhasrī.
— Editors: R. De Smet and J. Neuner, Religious Hinduism, Fourth Revised Edition, 1997, p. 82
3 …There will later be occasion to note the ideological conjuncture of philology and nationalism that marked the Mahabharata critical-edition project that began in Pune in the 1920s. But that was not the first time in South Asia that an edition of the Mahabharata was deliberately created, albeit premodern editions differed markedly in critical method, social context, and cultural-political purpose from what was to come later.— Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Ranikhet, Permananet Black, 2006. p.230
4Like its impact on dissemination, the effect of print on textuality itself is also often overstated. Those who know something of the history of the critical edition of the Sanskrit Mahabharata begun in Pune after the First World War are often too quick to suppose it an example of modernity’s reductive textual episteme at work in a world previously so enchanting in its chaotic orality. Undoubtedly the Pune project represented an instance of a powerful ideological conjuncture of philology and nationalism of the kind clearly visible a generation earlier in Europe, in the Franco-Prussian war of philology around the Frankish epos; it seems hardly accidental that the project should have been organized in the region that a few years later (1925) gave (p.558) birth to the neo-Hindu rationalist movement. The nation-state then gestating in the womb of the colonial order certainly required an ancient birth certificate in modern printed form. But the Pune project was not the first time in South Asia that an edition of the Mahabharata was deliberately created, and indeed, in no way did it mark the beginning of a textual-critical approach to the work.—ibid. pp.558-59
5About the question of Principle Upanishad see:
6 And, people refer to the Upanisads without even knowing what they are. The Upanisads are a part of something else; they are not an independent work. They are selections out of Aaranyakas, out of Samhitaas. Isa Upanisad is not a separate text; it is an (p.52) integral part of the Yajurveda Samhitaa. Why, then, do we call it an Upanisad? Who made the selection? What were the criteria of the selection? Anyone who speaks of Upanisads as separate text independent from Aaranyakas, Braahmanas and Samhitaas is doing an injustice. There are some Upanisads, which are independent, such as the Svetaasvatara. In fact, the Upanisads continued to be written till almost the 13th century. But, if this is true, how can this be regarded as sruti. For, it something, is a sruti, or if something is regarded as sruti, we cannot add to it. The whole idea of what is sruti, what is accepted an authority, is a vexed question.— Prof. Daya Krishna, in Bhakti: A Contemporary Discussion (Philosophical Explorations In the Indian Bhakti Tradition), Edited by Daya Krishna, Mukund Lath & Francine E. Krishna, Indian Council of Philosophical Research 2000, New Delhi, 2000,p. 52-53
7…Similar inclinations toward religious-based expressions of political authority also led to the production of other Sanskrit texts for explicit Mughal use, such as the Allopanisad (Allah’s Upanisad).
Probably around the year 1580, an anonymous author, likely a Brahman, composed a strange but noteworthy Sanskrit text at Akbar’s request titled Allopanisad.67 Imitating a Vedic style, this short work of ten verses…..—p. Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit At the Mughal Court, Gurgaon, Haryana, 2016,
8…Additions to the Skanda Purana are so numerous, with some as recent as the sixteenth century, that even the native tradition regards this Purana as a “scrap-bag” (Doniger, Wendy, “The Scrapbook of Undeserved Salvation: The Kedara Khanda of the Skanda Purana.” In Wendy Doniger, ed., Purana Perennis: Reciprocity ad Transformation in Hindu and Jaina Texts, 59-81, 262-65, 304-5. Albany: State university of New York Press, 1993: 59)…..— PURANA, Velcheru Narayana Rao. Pp. 97-115, in ibid. p. 107; also see Wendy Doniger, Purāṇa Perennis: Reciprocity and Transformation in Hindu and Jaina Texts, State University of New York Press, 1993, p. 53
9 Bart Ehrman Forged, New York, HarperOne, 2011 and Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, San Francisco, Harper, 2002. For more work by him see Internet.
10. I myself was a great fan of Agatha Christie when I was a young man, and I was also aware of books published under her name that were not actually written by her. Having read many of her novels, as well as books by Irving Wallace, I recognized the difference and was already familiar with this practice.
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