The Itihasas and the Puranas are full of stirring mythological narratives of avatars of the Supreme Being.
The scriptures of the Epic Period are known as the Itihasas and Puranas. They are not as philosophical or abstract as the Vedas and the Upanishads. They are devoted to the anthropomorphic manifestations of the Supreme Being and His various avatars on earth.
There are four scriptures under Itihasas, which means histories: The Ramayana, the Yogavashishtha, the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa. These works expound the universal truths in the form of historical narratives. They are for the benefit of common people who would find the arguments and the concepts of the Vedas and the Upanishads difficult to comprehend.
The more popular of the Itihasas are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. They are also known as Mahakavyas or Epics. The Ramayana narrates the life of Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu and is written by Valmiki. The Mahabharata is about the Great War between the cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, in which Krishna the eighth incarnation of Vishnu played a major role. It is written by Vyasa.
The wealth of the mythological knowledge however is found in the Puranas. All Puranas contain information on avatars, cosmology, creation, genealogy of kings and time cycles. Krishna Dwaipayana, the son of Sage Parashara, more popularly known as Vyasa is the compiler of the Puranas. He is the same sage who wrote the Mahabharata and divided the Vedas into the four books.
There are eighteen main Puranas and an equal number of subsidiary Puranas. Of these, six glorify Vishnu, six glorify Brahma and six glorify Shiva. This is an attempt to maintain equality between the three main manifestations of the Supreme Being.
The most popular among the Puranas is the Srimad Bhagavata Purana. The Srimad Bhagavata Purana is a chronicle of the various incarnations of Lord Vishnu, but focuses on Krishna. Each Purana has a specific purpose and was first narrated on a special occasion. The purpose of the Srimad Bhagavata Purana is to enable a person to overcome the fear of death. Sukhdev, the son of Vyasa narrated it to King Parikshit, when Parikshit was cursed to die in a week's time.
The longest Purana is the Skanda Purana, which has 81000 couplets. The shortest is the Markandeya Purana, which has 9000 couplets. The Mahabharata has 100000 couplets and is said to be the longest epic in the world – longer than the Odyssey and the Iliad put together.
It is said that Vyasa first recited the Puranas to his disciple Lomaharshana, who then spread them to the other sages and common people. "Loma" means hair and "harshana" means to thrill. These tales were hair-raising in a way and hence the narrator was given the name Lomaharshana. The Puranas went orally from generation to generation. Each time the narrator would add some detail of his own and hence the content kept on changing. The Puranas as we know them today were crystallized and put in writing some time between 300 AD and 1000 AD. Some sections in each Purana were fairly recent (a few hundred years) whereas others could have been as old as ten thousand years.
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