Puranas

The Puranas are a class of literary texts, all written in Sanskrit verse, whose
composition dates from the 4th century BCE to about 1,000 A.D. The word
"Purana" means "old", and generally they are considered as coming in the
chronological aftermath of the epics, though sometimes the Mahabharata,
Mahabharata,
which is generally classified as a work of itihas (history), is also referred to
as a purana. Some scholars, such as van Buitenen, are inclined to view the
Puranas as beginning around the time that the composition of the
Mahabharata came to a close, that is about 300 A.D. Certainly, in its final
form the Mahabharata shows puranic features, and the Harivamsa,
Harivamsa, which is
an appendix to the Mahabharata where the life of Krishna or Hari is treated
at some length, has sometimes been seen as a purana. The special subject of
the puranas is the powers and works of the gods, and one ancient Sanskrit
lexicographer, Amarasinha, writing in the fifth or sixth century A.D.,
defined a purana as having five characteristic topics, or pancalaksana:
pancalaksana: "(1)
The creation of the universe; (2) Its destruction and renovation; (3) The
genealogy of gods and patriarchs; (4) The reigns of the Manus, forming the
periods called Manwantaras; (5) the history of the Solar and Lunar races of
kings." No one purana can be described as exhibiting in fine (or even coarse)
detail all five of these distinguishing traits, but sometimes the Vishnu
Purana is thought to most closely resemble the traditional definition.
Around the time when the puranas first began to be composed, the belief in
particular deities had become established as one of the principal marks of the
Hindu faith, and to some degree the puranas can be described as a form of
sectarian literature. Some puranas exhibit devotion to Shiva; in others, the
devotion to Vishnu predominates.

There are eighteen major puranas, as well as a similar number of minor or

subordinate puranas. One method of the classification of puranas deploys the
traditional tripartite division of the gunas or qualities which tend toward
purity (sattva
(sattva),
), impurity or ignorance (tamas
(tamas),
), and passion (rajas
(rajas).
). Thus,
there are those puranas where the quality of sattva is said to predominate,
and these are six in number: Vishnu; Narada; Bhagavata;
Bhagavata; Garuda; Padma;
and Varaha. According to another scheme of classification, these are also the
puranas in which Vishnu appears as the Supreme Being. A second set of
puranas, also six in number, are described as exhibiting qualities of
ignorance or impurity (tamas
(tamas),), and in these Shiva is the God to whom
devotion is rendered: Matsya; Kurma; Linga; Shiva; Skanda; and Agni. In
the third set of six puranas, the quality of rajas or blind passion supposedly
prevails: Brahma; Bramanda; Brahmavaivarta; Markandeya; Bhavishya; and
Vamana. The list of eighteen is sometimes enlarged to twenty, to include the
Vayu Purana and the Harivamsa. Yet clearly this mode of classification,
which shows every sign of sectarianism, is inadequate, since none of the
puranas is devoted exclusively to either Vishnu or Shiva. Among these
puranas, the Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavata Purana (also known as the
Bhagavatam) are, with respect to their standing as works of devotional
literature, preeminent; and the Bhagavata Purana is even the supreme work
of Krishna devotional literature. Since each of the eighteen major puranas
enumerates the other puranas, it is reasonable to surmise that all the puranas
were revised at one point. Their length varies considerably: the Skanda has
80,000 couplets, while the Brahma and Vamana Puranas have 10,000
couplets each.

Though all the Puranas have been translated into major Indian languages as
well as English, only a few of them, principally the Vishnu Purana and the
Bhagavatam, can safely be described as being widely known. Nonetheless,
the stories told in the Puranas are part of the common currency, and in this
respect the Puranas can rightfully be spoken of as the scriptures of popular
Hinduism. It is the Puranas that British scholars had in mind when they
mocked the literature of the Hindus as fanciful, hyperbolic, and absurd.
Genealogies in which certain kings are said to rule for thousands of years, or
conceptions of time where tens of thousands of years are said to be a mere
instant, were not calculated to make the British regard the Puranas as a set of
rational religious texts. However, it requires a very different imagination, as
well as interpretive strategy, to read the Puranas. To suppose that Hindus
truly believe in "330 million gods and goddesses" is to fail to understand the
place of numbers in the Indian imagination, and the hermeneutic,
interpretive, and creative work that numbers do. The Puranas are works that
most eminently represent the deep mythic structuring of Indian civilization,
and they are properly viewed as expanding upon, modifying, and
transforming the orthodox Brahminism of the Vedas, principally by the
introduction of the idea of bhakti or devotion. It is the Puranas which, it is
no exaggeration to say, assisted in the transition from Brahminism to
Hinduism, particularly a Hinduism that was more receptive to folk elements,
popular forms of devotion and worship, and everyday arts, crafts, and
sciences. The Puranas carry story about the gods who had become the
objects of people’s devotion, as well as about the modes of worship of these
gods; these gods are no longer Vedic gods, but the gods who form the Hindu
trinity. Besides them, the Puranas speak of the battle between the devas and
the asuras, and one can doubtless read the narratives as allegorical accounts
of the struggle within each person between the forces of ‘light’ and the
forces of ‘darkness’. The Puranas delineate the religious obligations by
which each person is bound, and as such they are a guide to dharmic living.
Though the Puranas are a vast repository of Hindu lore, religious practices
— yoga, vows, puja, prayers, sacrifices -- and everyday customs, they are
not without a sense of humor and irony, and they complement the
metaphysical austerity of the Upanishads, the magical and sacrificial lore of
the Atharva Veda, and the sacerdotal orthodoxy of the Rig Veda.