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The Shiva Purana, belonging to the Purana genre of Sanskrit texts in Hinduism, is one of the eighteen major texts and forms an integral part of the Shaivism literature corpus. Centered around the Hindu deities Shiva and Parvati, it extends reverence to all gods.
According to the Shiva Purana, it originally comprised 100,000 verses organized into twelve Samhitas (Books). However, Sage Vyasa abridged it before transmitting it to Romaharshana. Various surviving manuscripts exist in diverse versions, including a major one with seven books (traced to South India), another with six books, and a third version from medieval Bengal featuring two large sections called Purva-Khanda (Previous Section) and Uttara-Khanda (Later Section) but no individual books. The versions with books share some titles, while others differ. As a typical Purana in Hindu literature, the Shiva Purana underwent regular editing, recasting, and revision over an extensive period. The oldest surviving manuscripts likely date back to the 10th to 11th century CE, while some chapters may have been composed after the 14th century.
The Shiva Purana encompasses chapters on Shiva-centric cosmology, mythology, relationships between gods, ethics, yoga, pilgrimage sites (tirtha), devotion (bhakti), rivers, geography, and other subjects. It serves as a crucial source of historical information on Shaivism’s various types and theology in the early 2nd millennium CE. The oldest extant chapters also contain significant elements of Advaita Vedanta philosophy, interwoven with theistic elements of devotion (bhakti).
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Vayu Purana was occasionally identified as the Shiva Purana and proposed as part of the complete Shiva Purana. With the discovery of more manuscripts, modern scholarship recognizes them as distinct texts, designating Vayu Purana as the older text, likely composed before the 2nd century CE. Some scholars classify it as a Mahapurana, while others categorize it as an Upapurana.