A genre of ancient and religious texts written in Sanskrit, Tamil and other languages. The texts are encyclopaedic and cover diverse topics, including cosmology, theology, mineralogy, grammar, medicine, folk tales and philosophy. The texts have over forty thousand verses, the first versions of which were likely composed c. third to tenth century CE. Puranas have been passed down through manuscripts as well as oral histories and are mostly likely to have multiple authors. From the Sanskrit word purana, meaning “ancient” or “former.”