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The Hindu Maha Puranas are traditionally attributed to Vyasa, but many scholars considered them likely the work of many authors over the centuries; in contrast, most Jaina Puranas can be dated and their authors assigned. [5] There are 18 Mukhya Puranas (Major Puranas) and 18 Upa Puranas (Minor Puranas), [8] with over 400,000 verses. [2]
Puranas: Historic texts (usually about a royal lineage or local legends) - written by court-appointed historians. Usually contrasted with historical descriptions in vedas, brahmanas, etc., that are written by priests. c.700 BCE (origins) [3]: 59–
Hinduism is an ancient religion, with denominations such as Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Shaktism, among others. [1] [2] Each tradition has a long list of Hindu texts, with subgenre based on syncretization of ideas from Samkhya, Nyaya, Yoga, Vedanta and other schools of Hindu philosophy.
[47] [49] [50] The content is diverse across the Puranas, and each Purana has survived in numerous manuscripts which are themselves voluminous and comprehensive. The Hindu Puranas are anonymous texts and likely the work of many authors over the centuries; in contrast, most Jaina Puranas can be dated and their authors assigned. [48]
[5] [6] [7] The number of chapters vary with regional manuscripts, and the critical edition (edited by Anand Swarup Gupta, and published by the All-India Kashiraj Trust, Varanasi) of the Kurma Purana has 95 chapters. [8] Tradition believes that the Kurma Purana text had 17,000 verses, the extant manuscripts have about 6,000 verses. [9]
The source of many popular stories of Krishna's pastimes for centuries in the Indian subcontinent, [6] the Bhagavata Purana is widely recognized as the best-known and most influential of the Puranas, and as a part of Vedic literature (the Puranas, Itihasa epics, and Upanishads) is referred to as the "Fifth Veda".
The Vishnudharmottara Purana is a Vaishnava-tradition text. It includes mythology and dharma legends, has sections on cosmology, cosmogony, geography, astronomy, astrology, division of time, genealogies (mostly of kings and sages), manners and customs, charity, penances, law and politics, war strategies, medicines and their preparation for human beings and animals, cuisine, grammar, metrics ...
The Matsya Purana, like all Puranas, was revised and updated continuously. The composition of the text may have begun in the last centuries of the 1st-millennium BCE, and its first version complete by about the 3rd-century of the common era, asserts Ramachandra Dikshitar – known for proposing ancient dates for Indian literature. [4]