Non commercial website, for knowledge sharing. Free to copy and use, if you find it useful. Puranas or Stories

• Out of one crore tales or stories, one lakh survive. Out of one lakh survived, one thousand are documented/published. Out of one thousand, one hundred are sold/distributed. Out of one hundred, only ten (not best out of one crore) is read by many.
• Only one can become famous. famous one may not be the best one. We would have lost many valuable tales over time. (Lost Gems)
• All stories/tales get distorted/modified over time and when retold in other places.
• Epics like Ramayana are made from few stories (including folk tales). So with different combination of tales, we have different versions. Difficult to know which is closest to the original.
• One need not take the story seriously, try to prove or disprove every detail. What one can infer or learn from it is more important. No one person/race/country/religion own these tales. So, no need to take it personally.

Puranas Myths Legend

• Purana, meaning "ancient" or "old". Its general themes are history, tradition and religion. It is usually written in the form of stories related by one person to another.
• Itihasa, literally meaning that which happened or History. The word is often used within India to refer to Hindu Epics, Mahakavyas such as Ramayana and Mahabharata.
• Myths make interesting readings with all added spices and exotic/super natural content.
• Many puranas are built on some historical fact/tale, changed to suit audience and famed for exaggeration!
• Many mythical tales seems to overlap with the Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek/roman and other mythologies.
• The gods and other characters are like humans because humans created them.

Aim of Puranas

1. The aim of the Puranas is to impress on devotion to God, through concrete examples, myths, stories, legends, lives of saints, kings and great men, allegories and chronicles of great historical events.
2. Stories are told in such a way to create fear such that people will follow social rules and tradition (ex. If you do not do this, you will suffer. Others who did this became rich)
3. Writers add their own views to show some god is superior or some tribe/language/caste is superior to others

About Puranas Creation

1. Good person did lot of tapas and got boons. Later become arrogant and became evil. Gods have to use tactics like special weapon, human-animal form, avatar and so on to kill evil persons
2. Suffering people pray to Gods or super natural beings and their problems are solved.
3. Evil person takes hostage (wife, son/daughter, ..) and Good has to fight. Good also use this tactics to win evil.
4. Normal or even good person does some mistakes (can be even small one). But have to reborn to suffer or pay for his past deeds. This is to show, one can not get away doing evil.
5. People loose their wealth and position by gambling and other vices.
6. Poor or Ordinary person (but smart) marry rich or royalty. (valli, Meenakshi, Srinivasa ...kalyanams).

Info on Puranas

1. Six puranas for Lord Vishnu are: 1) Vishnu Purana 2) Narada Purana 3) Srimad Bhavata Purana 4) Garuda Purna 5) Padma Purana 6) Varaha Purana
2. Six Puranas on Lord Siva are: 1) Matsya Purana 2) Kurma Purana 3) Linga Purana 4) Vayu Purana 5) Skanda Purana 6) Agni Purana
3. Six Puranas to Lord Brahma are: 1) Brahma Purana 2) Brahanda Purana 3) Brahma Vaivasvata Puranaor Brahma Vaivarta Purana 4) Markandeya Purana 5) Bhavishya Purana 6) Vamana Purana
4. The eighteen Upa-Puranas are: Sanatkumara, Narasimha, Brihannaradiya, Sivarahasya, Durvasa, Kapila, Vamana, Bhargava, Varuna, Kalika, Samba, Nandi, Surya, Parasara, Vasishtha, Devi-Bhagavata, Ganesa and Hamsa.

Some historical facts on some stories

king Mahabali