Shiva Purana

The Shiva Purana is Shaivism’s great Purana — the mythology, ritual, and pilgrimage geography of Shiva. Tradition says it once ran to a hundred thousand verses in twenty-four samhitas; the received text has seven samhitas of some 24,000 verses.

Content

Its narrative spine is Shiva’s marriage to Parvati, the birth of Kartikeya and Ganesha, and the great myths (the destruction of Daksha’s sacrifice, the Tripura burning, the descent of the Ganga); its famous chapters include the jyotirlinga list (the twelve shrines of Shiva’s light), the Vratas and the sacred months, and the Kashi-laudatory sections paralleling the Skanda Purana’s Kashi khanda.

Significance

The Shiva Purana is the liturgical backbone of temple Shaivism: its jyotirlinga chapters defined the twelve-shrine pilgrimage map; its Vrata chapters still govern household fasts. Its stories seeded the Puranic performing arts (the Shiva-lila traditions of the south).

Verification notes

• Text history is complex: scholarly consensus places strata from the early centuries CE, with major expansion into the 2nd millennium.
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).