HINDU PURANAS

AN OVERVIEW ABOUT THE HINDU PURANAS

I was about to give an explanation and overview of  what are puranas in a general sense and then describe the Kandha Purana and its author and the background to it. 
But it would be better to create a new thread for the puranas and let it flow side by side with Kandha Puranam and the story of Agasthya.
Please read on.......
What is a puraanam in the first place? Very briefly....
In Hinduism, the puraanas play a great part. 
        The puraanas are supposed to be a compilation or collection of stories and histories. But that would be an understatement at its best. 
        There are somewhat like the encyclopaedias of various  branches of knowledge. The stories are actually interwoven into the fabric of the puraana.
The puraana contained religious knowledge, Vedic knowledge, and science, technology of the times, war-craft, politics, history, geography, rituals, philosophy, linguistics, ethnology, ethics, code of conduct, law, dharma, and many other things.
For instance, the puraana would say that so-and-so worshipped Siva at such-and-such an occasion for such-and-such a purpose. It will elaborate on what mantra he used; what rituals he performed; what austerities did he observe; what sthothra accompanied it; what offerings were used; what was the outcome. If it were done wrongly, what went wrong and how not to do it wrongly. How to do the remedial measures 
if something was done incorrectly. How to do which prayOga, which one, for what purpose.
When a king or somebody meets with a sage, the sage would give a rather long discourse about dharma and other relevant matters. 
The puranic source has often been used as a pretext in legal matters in those days.
It would describe the universe and its creation; the worlds within it; the continents and countries in a particular world; the inhabitants of the world; the races and languages; the dynasties; the origins of those dynasties; the lineage of kings; the history of the country and its kings. 
The stories would usually contain sub stories, mini-stories, and micro-stories.
Before I go any further, I wish to emphasis that the puraanas have their negative aspects as well. 
For one thing, there have been a lot of interpolations. There have been distortions and additions to suit certain groups of people. There are also countless instances of  prejudice and double standards.
The ancient narrators did not understand what was exactly handed over to them. Because they lacked the advanced technical knowledge about things that were there, so many galaxies away, in the very distant remote past. The resultant was something that looked like a fantastic fabrication of the wildest imagination possible. But, there have also been advantages and uses. 
        The puraanaas have also been used to spread superstitions. They are too voluminous. That makes it too difficult to separate the chaff from real grain.
  Those who wrote the puraanas were called the pauraaNikas. 
        Usually the purana would be quoted as the narration of  some sage or deva or god. Sometimes, it would be a discourse, or question and answer session between two people or gods/goddesses. It would accordingly be named. Some puraanas are named according to the god or goddess about whom the puraana is written.
Although the puraana passes under an authorship, there have been innumerable additions that have taken place during the course of these thousands of years that have passed. A puraana can be deemed as having collective authorship. 
Some of the puranas are huge. Skandha puraana has more than 100,000 verses.


There are 18 major and 18 minor puraanas. 
Apart from these, there are innumerable 'sthala puraana's. 
A sthala puraanam is dedicated to a particular place. It extols the virtues of that place. It was a custom in those days to have somebody compile or compose a puraanam for a particular sthalam.
Thamilz Thaaththaa U.VE.Saaminaadhaiyar's preceptor, MahaaVidhvaan Thirusirapuram MiinaatchiSundaram Pillai has composed quite a number of sthala puraanams during the second half of the l8th century. 
VEdha Vyaasa is said to have been the for-runner of all the major and minor puraanas.
He is considered to be an incarnation of Naaraayana during the Dvaapara yugam. 
We may find that more than one avathaaram or amsam to be living at the same time In Raamaayanam, we find Raama, and ParasuRaama. In Dvaapara yugam, we find Krishna and ParasuRaama. In addition we also find partial avathaarams like VEdha Vyaasa also.


Once upon a time, it is said that there were thousands of vedhas. Vyaasa is said to have compiled them into the 4 vedhas - Rig, Saama, Yajur and Aharvana vedhas. 
He gave the 4 vedhas to 4 rishis. 
Rig to Paila, Saama to Jaimini, Yajur to Vaisambaayana, and Atharva to Subhandhu.
Then, from the immense available sources, he compiled  the 18 puraanas - 


Braahma, 
Padma, 
Vishnu, 
Siva, 
Bhaagavatha,
Bavishya, 
Naaradha, 
MaarkandEya, 
Agni, 
Brahma Vaivartha, 
Lingga, Varaaha, 
Skandha, 
Vaamana, 
Mathsya, 
Kuurma, 
Garuda, 
Brahmaanda Puraanam.


Originally Siva, Bhavishya, Lingga, MaarkandEya, Varaaha, and Skandha puraanams had 300,000 verses. All these extol Siva. 
Bhaagavatham, Garuda, Naaradha, and Vishnu puraanas are dedicated to Vishnu.
Brahma had Braahma puraanam and Padma puraanam.
Brahmaanda puraanam contains the story of SriLalitha MahaThiripurasundhari as LalithObagyAnNam. In it Sri Lalitha Sahasranaamam is found. Details about its recitation are given.It is in the form of a discourse between SriHayagrivar and Agasthya where Agasthya learns about SriVidya from SriHayagriva.
Hayagriva is a form of VishNu.
MaarkandEya puraanam has the Sri DEvi Maahaathmyam.
Thus we find several gods/goddesses being extolled in these puraanas although the puraana may be dedicated to a particular god.
Among these, Skandha puraanam is made up of six books called 'Samhitha's containing 100,000 verses. 
Sanathkumaara samhithai - 55000,
Suutha samhithai - 6000, 
Brahma samhithai - 3000
Vishnu samhithai - 5000 
Sankara samhithai - 3000
Saura samhithai - 1000 


The six books are subdivided into 50 kaandams. 
Sankara Samhithai contains a subsection called 'Siva Rahasya Kaandam' of 13000 slokas. 
This is subdivided into seven sub-kaandams called:  
Sambhava, 
Aasura, 
ViiraMahendra, 
Yuddha, 
DEva, 
Dhaksha, 
and UpadEsa. 


Murugan's story is told in these seven sections.
I will give a short synopsis of the Tamil KandhaPuranam and its composition by its author, Kachchiyappa Sivachariyar.

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