Agni Purana

A page from an Agni Purana manuscript (Sanskrit, Devanagari)
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The Agni Purana, (Sanskrit: अग्नि पुराण, Agni Purāṇa) is a Sanskrit text and one of the eighteen major Puranas of Hinduism.[1] The text is variously classified as a Purana related to Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Shaktism and Smartism, but also considered as a text that covers them all impartially without leaning towards a particular theology.[1][2]

The text exists in numerous versions, some very different from others.[3] The published manuscripts are divided into 382 or 383 chapters, containing between 12,000 and 15,000 verses.[3][4] The chapters of the text were likely composed in different centuries, with earliest version probably after the 7th-century,[5][6] but before the 11th century because the early 11th-century Persian scholar Al-Biruni acknowledged its existence in his memoir on India.[7] The youngest layer of the text in the Agni Purana may be from the 17th century.[7]

The Agni Purana is a medieval era encyclopedia that covers a diverse range of topics, and its "382 or 383 chapters actually deal with anything and everything", remark scholars such as Moriz Winternitz and Ludo Rocher.[8][9] Its encyclopedic secular style led some 19th-century Indologists such as Horace Hayman Wilson to question if it even qualifies as what is assumed to be a Purana.[10][11] The range of topics covered by this text include cosmology, mythology, genealogy, politics, education system, iconography, taxation theories, organization of army, theories on proper causes for war, martial arts,[5] diplomacy, local laws, building public projects, water distribution methods, trees and plants, medicine,[12] design and architecture,[13][14] gemology, grammar, metrics, poetry, food and agriculture,[15] rituals, geography and travel guide to Mithila (Bihar and neighboring states), cultural history, and numerous other topics.[4]

  1. ^ a b Dalal 2014, p. 10.
  2. ^ Rocher 1986, pp. 20–22.
  3. ^ a b Wilson 1864, p. LVIII-LX.
  4. ^ a b Rocher 1986, pp. 134–137.
  5. ^ a b Thomas Green (2001). Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, ISBN 978-1576071502, page 282
  6. ^ Phillip B. Zarrilli. Paradigms of Practice and Power in a South Indian Martial Art. University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  7. ^ a b Rocher 1986, pp. 31, 136–137.
  8. ^ Winternitz 1922, p. 541.
  9. ^ Rocher 1986, pp. 134–135.
  10. ^ Dalal 2014, pp. 10, 145.
  11. ^ Rocher 1986, pp. 79 with footnotes.
  12. ^ Jagdish Lal Shastri; Arnold Kunst (1970). Ancient Indian Tradition & Mythology: The Agni Purana, Part 4. Motilal Banarsidass. p. xxx. ISBN 978-81-208-0306-0.
  13. ^ Kramrisch 1976, p. 96, 136 with footnotes.
  14. ^ James C. Harle (1994). The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent. Yale University Press. p. 215. ISBN 978-0-300-06217-5.
  15. ^ VC Srivastava (2008). History of Agriculture in India, Up to C. 1200 A.D. Routledge. p. 839. ISBN 978-81-8069-521-6.