The Skanda Purana Is Transcribed

A manuscript of the Skanda Purana is produced, becoming the earliest known manuscript of the Puranas in the present day after it is rediscovered in Kathmandu (in present-day Nepal) in 1898. Composed and orally transmitted from the third century CE onwards, the Puranas are written down only much later. They are a major source of mythological and iconographic ideas in Indian art for several centuries both before and after the production of this early manuscript. Like other Smriti texts, which are treated not as religious texts but as guides, such historical Purana manuscripts will differ greatly from their modern counterparts, demonstrating the constant re-invention of such works.