Puranic literature has served as a shared symbolic reservoir from which Indian art, ritual, and devotion continually draw. In the visual realm, sculptors and painters rely on Puranic descriptions to shape the forms, attributes, and gestures of deities such as Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, and Ganesha. Temple walls, pillars, and ceilings become narrative spaces where episodes like Krishna’s childhood exploits, Vishnu’s avataras, or Shiva’s cosmic dance are rendered in stone and color. These images are not merely decorative; they encode a cosmology in which Mount Meru, the various lokas, and the cycles of time are given tangible form through iconography and sacred architecture.

In literature, the Puranas have provided an inexhaustible treasury of stories, characters, and theological motifs. Classical and medieval poets, as well as authors in regional languages, have reworked Puranic narratives into poems, dramas, and romances, exploring themes such as devotion, the triumph of dharma, and the rhythm of creation and dissolution. Bhakti movements in particular have drawn deeply from texts like the Bhagavata Purana and other Vaishnava and Shakta Puranas, inspiring saint-poets to retell the lives and deeds of Krishna, Rama, Shiva, and the Goddess in vernacular idioms. Local Sthala Puranas extend this process by inscribing villages, rivers, and hills into a wider sacred geography modeled on the major Puranas.

Music and performance arts translate these same narratives into sound and movement. Devotional genres such as kirtan and bhajan often take entire episodes from the Bhagavata, Vishnu, Shiva, or Devi Puranas as their lyrical core, while classical compositions in both Carnatic and Hindustani traditions invoke Puranic deities and episodes by name. Classical dance forms—Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Kathakali, Yakshagana, and others—stage Puranic stories as dance-dramas, presupposing an audience already attuned to these myths. Storytelling traditions like Harikatha, Kathakalakshepam, Pravachan, and Bhagavata Mela weave together recitation, music, and explanation, turning Puranic narrative into a living oral theology.

Temple ritual and festival life are perhaps where Puranic influence is most continuously felt. Manuals associated with Puranic traditions guide the daily worship of murtis, specifying mantras, offerings, and narrative recitations appropriate to each deity. Major festivals—such as those centered on Krishna, Rama, Shiva, or the Goddess—are framed through Puranic episodes and their promised spiritual benefits, shaping both the calendar and the mood of communal celebration. Temple-specific myths, preserved as Sthala Puranas, explain how a particular deity manifested in a given place and why certain rites are performed there, while pilgrimage circuits follow the mahatmyas that extol the sanctity of rivers and sacred cities. Through these intertwined forms of art, literature, music, and ritual, the Puranas function as a unifying scriptural thread, yet one that allows for rich regional variation and creative reinterpretation.