Skanda Purana

The Skanda Purana is the largest of the Mahapuranas — some eighty thousand verses across its recensions, named for Kartikeya (Skanda) and devoted above all to Shiva’s shrines and sacred geography.

Content

The text circulates in several recensions; its famous khandas include the Kashi Khanda (the great laudation of Varanasi, source of the city’s sacred topography), the Nagara Khanda, the Prabhasa Khanda (Somnath’s shrine), and the Maheshvara Khanda with the Kartikeya narratives. Its chapters on tirthas made it the pilgrims’ encyclopedia: the book catalogs the holy fords, temples, and vows of the subcontinent.

Significance

For pilgrimage geography the Skanda Purana is the primary classical source — Kashi’s mythology, the jyotirlinga shrines’ local Puranas, the tirtha-lists still recited at bathing ghats. Its layered composition makes it a record of how sacred India was mapped and remapped across a millennium.

Verification notes

• Recensions differ widely; scholarly work (Rocher, Adriaensen/Bakker among others) documents strata from roughly the 6th to the 15th century.
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).