Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c4.2

c4.2

The Purāṇas along with the Great Epics—the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, have for centuries, profoundly influenced Indian life and Culture. The well-known definition of a Purāṇa as a work having five characteristic features—purāṇam pañcalakṣaṇam—namely, primary creation, secondary creation, the genealogies, the ages of Manu, and the dynastic account hardly does justice to the full significance of these works. They are much more than that. While their genealogies and the dynastic account form the bed-rock of the political history of ancient India, they throw a flood of light on all aspects of Indian Culture—its religion, social practices, art, literature and sciences. They serve as the key to the proper understanding of the various aspects of Hinduism—its beliefs, its modes of worship, its mythology, its festivals, feasts, and fasts, its sacred shrines and places of pilgrimage, its philosophy and ethics and its theogony. Truly it has been said that a Brahmin was not really wise if he did not know the Purāṇas. The study of ancient Indian history, and culture—particularly religion—is impossible without a proper knowledge of the Purāṇas. As a matter of fact, it is virtually impossible to understand not only ancient Indian culture and life, but also the literature in modern Indian languages, as it largely draws upon the ideas and ideologies as embodied in the contents of the Purāṇas and the epics.