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The Shiva Purana is one of eighteen major texts of the Purana genre of Sanskrit texts in Hinduism, and part of the Shaivism literature corpus.[1] It primarily revolves around the Hindu god Shiva and goddess Parvati, but references and reveres all gods.[2][3][4]
The Shiva Purana asserts that it once consisted of 100,000 verses set out in twelve Samhitas (Books); however, the Purana adds that it was abridged by Sage Vyasa before being taught to Romaharshana.[1] The surviving manuscripts exist in many different versions and content,[5] with one major version with seven books (traced to South India), another with six books, while the third version traced to the medieval Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent with no books but two large sections called Purva-Khanda (Previous Section) and Uttara-Khanda (Later Section).[1][6] The two versions that include books, title some of the books same and others differently.[1] The Shiva Purana, like other Puranas in Hindu literature, was likely a living text, which was routinely edited, recast and revised over a long period of time.[7][8] The oldest manuscript of surviving texts was likely composed, estimates Klaus Klostermaier, around 10th- to 11th-century CE.[9][4] Some chapters of currently surviving Shiva Purana manuscripts were likely composed after the 14th-century.[6]
The Shiva Purana contains chapters with Shiva-centered cosmology, mythology, and relationship between gods, ethics, yoga, tirtha (pilgrimage) sites, bhakti, rivers and geography, and other topics.[10][2][11] The text is an important source of historic information on different types and theology behind Shaivism in early 2nd-millennium CE.[12] The oldest surviving chapters of the Shiva Purana have significant Advaita Vedanta philosophy,[6] which is mixed in with theistic elements of bhakti.[13]
In the 19th and 20th century, the Vayu Purana was sometimes titled as Shiva Purana, and sometimes proposed as a part of the complete Shiva Purana.[14] With the discovery of more manuscripts, modern scholarship considers the two texts as different,[1] with Vayu Purana as the more older text composed sometime before the 2nd-century CE.[12][15][16] Some scholars list it as a Mahapurana, while some state it is an Upapurana.[6][17]
- ^ a b c d e Dalal 2014, p. 381.
- ^ a b JL Shastri 1950a.
- ^ Kramrisch 1976, pp. 172–173, 229, 263–275, 326, 340–369.
- ^ a b K P Gietz 1992, p. 323 with note 1780.
- ^ Rocher 1986, pp. 222–224.
- ^ a b c d K P Gietz 1992, p. 539 with note 2987.
- ^ Pintchman 2001, pp. 91-92 with note 4.
- ^ Arvind Sharma (2003). The Study of Hinduism. University of South Carolina Press. pp. 160–167. ISBN 978-1570034497.
- ^ Klostermaier 2007, p. 503.
- ^ Dalal 2014, pp. 381–382.
- ^ JL Shastri 1950d.
- ^ a b Klostermaier 2007, pp. 544-545 note 22.
- ^ Klaus K. Klostermaier (1984). Mythologies and Philosophies of Salvation in the Theistic Traditions of India. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. pp. 180, 263–264. ISBN 978-0-88920-158-3.
Quote: Though the basic tenor of those sections of Shiva Purana is Advaitic, the theistic elements of bhakti, gurupasati and so forth are mixed with it.
- ^ Shastri, JL (1970). The Siva Purana. India: Motilal Banarasidass. pp. xiii.
- ^ JL Shastri 1950b.
- ^ JL Shastri 1950c.
- ^ Rocher 1986, pp. 33–34.