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- The medieval Hindu texts called Purāṇas ("of the ancient times") contain Hindu cosmology at its most exuberant and efflorescent.
- Emerging during the early first millennium ce as a genre in their own right, Purāṇas were sponsored by each temple or kingdom and usually focused on a particular deity, which gave its own account of the world and its destruction.
- In the Purāṇas, the basic themes introduced in the epics and the Śāstras are elaborated upon imagistically, poetically, and mathematically.
- Moreover the theme of bhakti, or devotion, which was dramatically introduced in the epics and Yoga texts, becomes paramount.
