Puranas - Content

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According to Matysa Purana, they are said to narrate five subjects, called Pancha Lakshana pañcalakṣaṇa(Sanskrit:Template:Sanskrit) ("five distinguishing marks", though some scholars have suggested that these are shared by other traditional religious scriptures):

1. Sarga: the creation of the universe.
2. Pratisarga: secondary creations, mostly recreations after dissolution.
3. Vamśa: genealogy of the gods and sages.
4. Manvañtara: the creation of the human race and the first human beings. The epoch of the Manus' rule, 71 celestial Yugas or 308,448,000 years.
5. Vamśānucaritam: the histories of the patriarchs of the lunar and solar dynasties.

The Puranas also lay emphasis on keeping a record of genealogies, as the Vayu Purana says, "to preserve the genealogies of gods, sages and glorious kings and the traditions of great men." The Puranic genealogies indicate, for example, that Sraddhadeva Manu lived 95 generations before the Bharata war. In Arrian's Indica, Megasthenes is quoted as stating that the Indians counted from "Dionysos" (Shiva) to "Sandracottus" (Chandragupta Maurya) "a hundred and fifty-three kings over six thousand and forty-three years." The list of kings in Kalhana's Rajatarangini goes back to the 19th century BCE.