Purāna (Sansk., 'old') is the name of that class of religious works which, besides the Tantras (q.v.), is the main foundation of the actual popular creed of the Brahmanical Hindus (see INDIA, Vol. VI. p. 106). According to the popular belief, these works were compiled by Vyāsa, the supposed arranger of the Vedas (q.v.), and the author of the Mahābhārata (q.v.), and possess an antiquity far beyond the reach of historical computation. A critical investigation, however, of the contents of the existing works bearing that name must necessarily lead to the conclusion that in their present form they not only do not belong to a remote age, but can barely claim an antiquity of a thousand years, though they contain materials much more ancient. Cosmogonic and theogonic doctrines, epic stories, legendary lore, and miscellaneous and encyclopaedic matter constitute their contents. They all recognise the Hindu trinity, but are of sectarian tendency; the claims of one god or one holy place being in the various books or parts of them insisted on as worthy of special, if not exclusive, reverence. The Purānas are usually said to be eighteen in number (with a subordinate Upa-purāna to each); and these are subdivided into three groups of six. The first two are devoted to Vishnu and to Siva; the third, which should have fallen to Brahma, is mainly devoted to the several forms of Vishnu, Krishna, Devi, Ganesa, and Surya. They are written in epic couplets, and the eighteen chief Purānas are calculated to contain 400,000 couplets.
See VISHNU, SANSKRIT LITERATURE; Dr John Muir's Sanskrit Texts (1858-71); the Vishnu Purāna trans. by H. H. Wilson (1840; 2d ed. by Fitzedward Hall, 1864-77); the Bhāgavata Purāna, edited, with a French translation, by Burnouf and Hauvette-Besnault (4 vols. Paris, 1840-84), and, with a Sanskrit commentary, by Shridhar Pandit (3 vols. Bombay, 1887); the Mārkanḍeya and Agni Purānas, in the Bibliotheca Indica, by Banerjee and Rājendralāh Mitra.