Agni Purana                    Bhagavata Purana

 Bhavishya_Purana            Brahmanda Purana

 Ganesh Puran                  Garuda Purana

 Kurma Purana                  Linga Purana

 Markandeya Purana          Matsya Purana

 Narasimha Purana             Padam_Purana

 Skanda_Purana                Shiva Purana

 Vamana Purana                Varaha Purana

 Vayu Purana                    Vishnu Purana

 Set of Puranas

The Puranas are the richest collection of mythology in the world. Most of them attained their final form around 500 A.D. but they were passed on as an oral tradition since the time of Krishna (c. 1500 B.C.).There are eighteen major Puranas  known as Mahapuranas and few minor ones known as Upapuranas.Each is a long book consisting of various stories of the Gods and Goddesses, hymns, an outline of ancient history, cosmology, rules of life, rituals, instructions on spiritual knowledge. Hence the Puranas are like encyclopedias of religion and culture and contain material of different levels and degrees of difficulty.The Puranas are perhaps the most important or commonly used scriptural texts of the Hindus. They were guide books for the whole of life and society.The Puranas were written to popularise the religion of the Vedas. They contain the essence of the Vedas. The aim of the Puranas is to impress on the minds of the masses the teachings of the Vedas and to generate in them devotion to God, through concrete examples, myths, stories, legends, lives of saints, kings and great men, allegories and chronicles of great historical events. The sages made use of these things to illustrate the eternal principles of religion. The Puranas were meant, not for the scholars, but for the ordinary people who could not understand high philosophy and who could not study the Vedas.

The great sages, have revealed many Vedic literatures, such as the Puranas. The Puranas are not imaginative - they are actual histories, not only of this planet but of other planets within the creation.By definition, a Purana must cover five subjects: the creation of the universe , its destruction and recreation , the principal gods and patriarchs , the reigns of the Manus and the history of the Suryavanshi and Chandravanshi kings. However, none of the Puranas match this definition exactly, since none of them covers all five topics.

The 18 major Puranas are divided into three groups, each exalting one member of the Hindu Trinity. Those Puranas in which 'rajas' or passion prevails relate chiefly to Brahma. These are the Brahma Purana, Brahmanda Purana, Brahmavayvarta Purana, PuranaMarkandeya Purana, Bhavishya Purana, and Vamana Purana.

Those Puranas in which 'satva' or purity is the leitmotif is related to Vishnu. These are the Vishnu Purana, Bhagavata Purana, Naradiya Purana, Garuda Purana, Padma Purana and Varaha Purana.

Those in which 'tamas' or gloom and ignorance are dominant are related to Shiva. These are the Shiva Purana, Linga Purana, Skanda Purana, Agni Purana, Matsya Purana, and Kurma Purana. Sometimes the Vayu Purana is substituted for the Agni Purana or Shiva Purana.

Of the 18 major Puranas, the Vishnu Purana is the most complete, in that it conforms more than the others to the definition of a Purana. It has also been translated into English. According to some sources, the Markandeya Purana is considered to be the oldest Purana. Other sources state that the Vayu Purana is the oldest. The Bhagavata Purana (also Bhagavata Purana. 18th century cloth scroll, with illustrations of all the Puranas called the Shrimad Bhagavata) is believed to be the most recent and is the most popular.

Apart from these 18 Puranas, there are also 18 Upapuranas or subsidiary Puranas, which were composed after the major ones.