Puranas
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Puranas or Stories


Puranas Myths Legend

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

Most of the puranas are built on following themes:
  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

There are eighteen main Puranas and an equal number of subsidiary Puranas or Upa-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.
These are all Puranas in Tamil glorifying Lord Shiva and they are: 1. Siva Purana; 2. Periya Purana; 3. Siva Parakramam; and 4. Tiruvilayadal Purana

Some historical facts on some stories

king Mahabali

king Mahabali from Kerala lost his kingdom in a challenge with smart small boy. So, he has to go exile to far off islands in the south. The rule of Mahabali is considered to be the golden era of Kerala. Mahabali visit once every year, the lands and people he previously ruled. This revisit marks the festival of Onam, as a reminder of the virtuous rule. This became vamana avadhara.
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