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Skanda Purana

Medieval-era Sanskrit text

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  • 4 chapters

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The earliest text titled Skanda Purana likely existed by the 8th century CE, but the Skanda Purana that has survived into the modern era exists in many versions. It is considered as a living text, which has been widely edited, over many centuries, creating numerous variants. The common elements in the variant editions encyclopedically cover cosmogony, mythology, genealogy, dharma, festivals, gemology, temples, geography, discussion of virtues and evil, of theology and of the nature and qualities of Shiva as the Absolute and the source of true knowledge.

The editions of Skandapurana text also provide an encyclopedic travel handbook with meticulous Tirtha Mahatmya (pilgrimage tourist guides), containing geographical locations of pilgrimage centers in India, Nepal and Tibet, with related legends, parables, hymns and stories.

This Mahāpurāṇa, like others, is attributed to the sage Vyasa.

Date of composition

Haraprasad Shastri and Cecil Bendall, in about 1898, discovered an old palm-leaf manuscript of Skanda Purana in a Kathmandu library in Nepal, written in Gupta script. They dated the manuscript to 8th century CE, on paleographic grounds. This suggests that the original text existed before this time. R. Adriaensen, H.Bakker, and H. Isaacson dated the oldest surviving palm-leaf manuscript of Skanda Purana to 810 CE, but Richard Mann adds that earlier versions of the text likely existed in the 8th century CE. Hans Bakker states that the text specifies holy places and details about the 4th and 5th-century Citraratha of Andhra Pradesh, and thus may have an earlier origin. The oldest versions of the Skandapurana texts have been discovered in Nepal in the Himalayas, and Assam in northeastern India. The critical editions of the text, for scholarly studies, rely on the Nepalese manuscripts.

Additional texts style themselves as khandas (sections) of Skandapurana, but these came into existence after the 12th century. It is unclear if their root texts did belong to the Skandapurana, and in some cases replaced the corresponding chapters of the original. The version of the earliest known recension was later expanded in two later versions namely the Revakhanda and Ambikakhanda recensions. The only surviving manuscript of the Revakhanda recension is from 1682. The four surviving manuscripts of the Ambikakhhnda recension are of a later period and contains much more alterations. Judit Törzsök says a similar recension to these two recensions seems to have been known to Laskhmidhara, thus it existed before 12th century. Ballala Sena quotes content found only in these two recensions, thus the version known at that time was similar to the ancient version of these two recensions.

There are a number of texts and manuscripts that bear the title Skanda Purana. Some of these texts, except for the title, have little in common with the well-known Skandapurana traced to the 1st millennium CE. The original text has accrued several additions, resulting in several different versions. It is, therefore, very difficult to establish an exact date of composition for the Skanda Purana.

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PinyinRomanization scheme for Standard ChineseHindusAdherents of HinduismTraditional Chinese charactersStandardized set of Chinese charactersLiteral translationWord-for-word translation of a textReligionSocial-cultural systemTheologyStudy of the nature of deities and religious beliefs