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Debendra K. DashDipti R. Pattanaik 47ancient and medieval India. The ‘grand’ narratives were in perpetualtussle with the ‘little’ narratives.The textual practices developed in India can be divided intothree parts, i.e. the orthodox Brahminic (Sanskrit), the heterodox(subversive) and the folk (subaltern). The orthodox practiceencouraged imitative and interpretative texts while the heterodoxtradition gave rise to texts that subverted the hegemonic Sanskrittexts. It would be fruitful to invoke the Jaina Anekantabada in thiscontext. According to Ramakrishna Rao:It (Jaina Anekantabada) is what might be called a view ofreality as being pluralistic, many-sided or expressingitself in multiple forms. The result is that no absolutepredication of reality is valid. Whatever we assert aboutreality must be probable or relative (Ramakrishna Rao1975:94).This relativistic and pluralistic notion about reality gave riseto a tentative attitude to texts. The Brahiminical concept of anabsolute text was challenged by this notion and paved the way forsubsequent subversion of textual practices. The folk discoursebalanced the orthodox and heterodox elements in an unsystematicmanner. All these textual categories were not very conducive foriconic translations. In other words the contemporary notion oftranslation was not prevalent in ancient or medieval India. (See alsoDash and Pattanaik 2002). Though translation qua translation wasnot available, there were many retellings of the puranas in ancientand medieval India. The writing of puranas and upapuranas andtheir many retellings were due to a complex intellectual inheritanceof this genre. Though puranas were written in the Sanskrit languageby the Brahmin class, a design to disseminate knowledge among thecommon people was implicated within it. Knowledge was orthodox