| Puranas |
Website Links For Puranas |
Information AboutPuranas |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT PURANAS | |
| hindu texts | |
| puranas | |
| chronicleshindu texts | |
| puranas | |
| chronicles | |
| hindu texts | |
| hindu mythology | |
|
''Purana'' ( Genre (or a group of related genres) of Hindu or Jain Literature (as distinct from Oral Tradition ). Its general themes are history, Tradition , philosophy, and Religion . While the major puranas are in Sanskrit , puranas exist in other Indian languages also. Puranas are usually written in the form of stories related by one person to another. An early reference to Purana in its present sense can be traced to the Chandogya Upanishad (7.1.2), in which the sage Narada refers to ''.'' Thus the Chandogya Upanishad ascribes to the Puranas, together with Itihas , the status of a fifth Veda, or Panchama Veda . The Rgveda mentions Purana many times, though some say that there the meaning is "belonging to ancient times." There are many texts designated as 'Purana'. The most important are:
The ''s'' are dated philologically to between roughly the 3rd and the 12th centuries,Nagendra Kumar Singh (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Hinduism, (1997) ISBN 8174881689, p. 2324 the bulk of the texts likely originating in the Gupta Period (320-500 CE), with incremental additions well into medieval times. |
|
|