7. Did Surdas Perform the Bhāgavata-purāṇa?

Hawley utilises text history to analyse the verses of the songs attributed to the major Hindi poet-singer Surdas to find some consistencies in the earliest layer of the tradition which suggest what the historical person standing behind the text tradition was up to. As later tradition asserts, he was drawing from the Bhagvat Purana, but he wasn’t just confirming it. Instead, he was turning tales found in the scripture to his own ends, which often meant subverting it.