Skanda Purana

The Skanda Purāṇa (Tamil:கந்த புராணம் Kanda Purāṇam) is the largest Mahāpurāṇa, a genre of eighteen Hindu religious texts. The text is devoted mainly to the lilas of Kartikeya, a son of Shiva and Parvati, who is also known as Skanda. It also contains a number of legends about Shiva, and the holy places associated with him. This Mahāpurāṇa was recited by the sage Vyasa, and is available in distinct parts, sometimes fragmented too.

Date of composition

There are a number of texts and manuscripts that bear the title Skanda Purana. Some of these texts have little in common except the name. 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.

Haraprasad Shastri discovered an old manuscript of Skanda Purana in Nepal, written in Gupta script. He and Cecil Bendall dated the manuscript to 7th century CE, on paleographic grounds. This suggests that the original text existed before this time. R. Adriaensen, H.Bakker, and H. Isaacson (1998) dated the earliest extant manuscript of Skanda Purana to 810 CE, and suggested that the earliest versions of the text were composed in 6th century CE.

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