The Shiva Purana is one of eighteen major texts of the Purana genre of Sanskrit texts in Hinduism, and part of the Shaivism literature corpus. It primarily revolves around the Hindu god Shiva and goddess Parvati, but references and reveres all gods.
The Shiva Purana asserts that it once consisted of 100,000 verses set out in twelve Samhitas (Books); however, the Purana adds that it was abridged by Sage Vyasa before being taught to Romaharshana. The surviving manuscripts exist in many different versions and content, with one major version with seven books (traced to South India), another with six books, while the third version traced to the medieval Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent with no books but two large sections called Purva-Khanda (Previous Section) and Uttara-Khanda (Later Section). The two versions that include books, title some of the books same and others differently. The Shiva Purana, like other Puranas in Hindu literature, was likely a living text, which was routinely edited, recast and revised over a long period of time. The oldest manuscript of surviving texts was likely composed, estimates Klaus Klostermaier, around 10th- to 11th-century CE. Some chapters of currently surviving Shiva Purana manuscripts were likely composed after the 14th-century.
The Shiva Purana contains chapters with Shiva-centered cosmology and relationship between Gods, ethics, yoga, tirtha (pilgrimage) sites, bhakti, rivers and geography, and other topics. The text is an important source of historic information on different types and theology behind Shaivism in early 2nd-millennium CE. The oldest surviving chapters of the Shiva Purana have significant Advaita Vedanta philosophy, which is mixed in with theistic elements of bhakti.
In the 19th and 20th century, the Vayu Purana was sometimes titled as Shiva Purana, and sometimes proposed as a part of the complete Shiva Purana. With the discovery of more manuscripts, modern scholarship considers the two texts as different, with Vayu Purana as the more older text composed sometime before the 2nd-century CE. Some scholars list it as a Mahapurana, while some state it is an Upapurana.
Date
The date and authors of Shiva Purana are unknown. No authentic data is available. Scholars such as Klostermaier as well as Hazra estimate that the oldest chapters in the surviving manuscript were likely composed around the 10- to 11th-centuries CE, which has not stood the test of carbon dating technology hence on that part we must rely on the text itself which tells when it was composed. Certain books and chapters in currently surviving Shiva Purana manuscripts were likely composed later, some after the 14th-century. The Shiva Purana, like other Puranas in Hindu literature, were routinely edited, recast and revised over the centuries.
Hazra states that the Bombay manuscript published in the 19th-century is rarer, and is likely older than other versions published from eastern and southern India.
Different manuscripts
Several recensions of this text exist. The Bombay 1884 manuscript recension published by the Vangavasi Press, Calcutta in 1896 consists of six s (sections):
The second manuscript of Shiva Purana published in 1906, reprinted in 1965, by the Pandita Pustakalaya, Kashi consists of seven s:
According to a passage found in the first chapters of and of these recensions the original Shiva Purana comprised twelve s, which included five lost s: , (or ), , and (or ). The number of verses in these sections were as follows: Vidyeshvara Samhita - 10,000 Rudra Samhita - 8,000 Vainayaka Samhita - 8,000 Uma Samhita - 8,000 Matri Samhita - 8,000 Rudraikadasha Samhita - 13,000 Kailasa Samhita - 6,000 Shatarudra Samhita - 3,000 Sahasrakotirudra Samhita - 11,000 Kotirudra Samhita - 9,000 Vayaviya Samhita - 4,000 Dharma Samhita - 12,000 Several other s are also ascribed to the . These are the , the , the , the and the .
Haraprasad Shastri mentioned in the Notices of Sanskrit MSS IV, pp. 220–3, Nos, 298–299 about another manuscript of the , which is divided into Two Khandas (Parts), the and the . The consists 3270 s in 51 chapters written in Nagari script and the has 45 chapters written in Oriya script. It was preserved in Mahimprakash Brahmachari Matha in Puri. The of this manuscript is same as the of the Vangavasi Press Edition.