| Puranas |
Details |
| Agni Purana |
- Agni Purana, one of the major eighteen Puranas, contains descriptions and details of various incarnations (avatars) of Vishnu.
- It also has details account about Rama, Krishna, Prithvi, and the stars. It has a number of verses dealing with ritual worship, cosmology, history, warfare, and even sections on Sanskrit grammar, meter, law, medicine, and martial arts.
- Tradition has it that it was originally recited by Agni to the sage Vasishta.
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| Bhagavata |
- Bhagavata-purana, the most-celebrated text of a variety of Hindu sacred literature in Sanskrit that is known as the Purana and the specific text that is held sacred by the Bhagavata sect.
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It is the most sacred book of Hindus and is highly revered by the devotees of Lord Vishnu.
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Written by Rishi Vyasadeva, the book consists of 18,000 stanzas divided into 12 books, but it is Book X, which deals with Krishna’s childhood and his years spent among the cowherds of Vrindavana, that accounts for its immense popularity with Vaishnavas throughout India.
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| Matsya Purana |
- The Matsya Purana text is a Vaishnava text named after the fish avatar of Vishnu.
- These five characteristics are cosmogony describing its theory of primary creation of the universe, chronological description of secondary creations wherein the universe goes through the cycle of birth-life-death, genealogy and mythology of gods and goddesses, Manvantaras, legends of kings and people including solar and lunar dynasties.
- The text and tradition assert that Matsya Purana had 20,000 verses. However, extant manuscripts contain between 13,000 to 15,000 verses. The Padma Purana categorizes Matsya Purana as a Tamas Purana, or one that glorifies Shiva or Agni. It is related to Andhra dynasty.
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| Vayu Purana |
- The Vayu Purana is a Sanskrit text and one of the 18 major Puranas. It belongs to the Shaivism literature corpus and not included Buddha in the list of Avataras of Vishnu.
- Vayu Purana is mentioned in the manuscripts of the Mahabharata and other Sanskrit texts, which has led scholars to propose that the text is among the oldest in the Puranic genre.
- The various mentions of the Vayu Purana in other texts have led scholars to recognize it as one of the oldest.
- The Vayu Purana, according to the tradition and verses in other Puranas, contains 24,000 verses (Shlokas).
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