Introduction to Purāṇa Literature

The Purāṇas are the most important religious literature of India after the Vedas and the Mahākāvyas, i.e. the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata. Though, these are essentially religious in character, yet their contents are more wide–ranging and include so many branches of knowledge such as religion, philosophy, history, geography, poetics, and dramaturgy and so on and so forth. From the standpoint of variety of subjects discussed in the Purāṇas, they may be called an encyclopedia of ancient Indian thought just like the great epic Mahābhārata.

The Purāṇas constitute a branch of Indian literature which comes to be a store-house of Indian culture and civilization. As for the date of the Purāṇas, scholars find it difficult to come to a unanimous conclusion. Though, there are references to the Purāṇas even from the later Vedic Period, yet some of the modern scholars have come to place the Purāṇas at a very later date.^[1]

For the first time, the term Purāṇa is found in the Atharvaveda.^[2] Thereafter, the term purāṇa occurs in both Vedic and post Vedic works such as Śatapathabrāhmaṇa,^[3] Gopathabrāhmaṇa,^[4] Taittirīyāraṇyaka,^[5] Chāndogyopaniṣd^[6] Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad,^[7] Āśvalāyanagṛhyasūtra,^[8] Rāmāyaṇa,^[9] Mahābhārata,^[10] Arthaśāstra,^[11] Yājñavalkyasmṛti,^[12] Dakṣasmṛti^[13] etc.