The word Puranas (Sanskrit: पुराण, purāṇa, /pʊˈrɑːnəz/;) literally means "ancient, old", and it is a vast genre of Indian literature about a wide range of topics, particularly myths, legends and other traditional lore. Composed primarily in Sanskrit, but also in regional languages, several of these texts are named after major Hindu deities such as Vishnu, Shiva and Devi. The Puranas genre of literature is found in both Hinduism and Jainism.

The Puranic literature is encyclopedic, and it includes diverse topics such as cosmogony, cosmology, genealogies of gods, goddesses, kings, heroes, sages, and demigods, folk tales, pilgrimages, temples, medicine, astronomy, grammar, mineralogy, humor, love stories, as well as theology and philosophy. The content is highly inconsistent across the Puranas, and each Purana has survived in numerous manuscripts which are themselves inconsistent. 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.

Puran (Urdu: پُورن ) is a sub-division and tehsil of Shangla District in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The subdivision includes three tehsils viz: Puran itself, Martung and Makhuzai. Puran Sub-division comprises nine Union Councils.

References

External links