Within the Hindu tradition, the Purāṇas are not usually approached as historical records in the modern, empirical sense, but neither are they regarded as mere fiction. They are revered as sacred narratives that illuminate cosmology, the nature of the divine, and the workings of dharma through richly symbolic stories. Their accounts of vast cosmic cycles, divine activities, and moral exemplars are intended to convey spiritual insight and ethical orientation rather than verifiable chronology. In this way, they function as theological and didactic literature, shaping religious imagination and practice.

At the same time, the Purāṇas are not entirely detached from what might be called historical memory. They contain genealogies of kings and sages, references to dynasties, descriptions of regions, and portrayals of social and cultural practices. Many within the tradition regard such elements as authentic, seeing them as records of real lineages and events embedded within a larger cosmic framework. These strands of remembered past, however, are interwoven with supernatural episodes, divine interventions, and time scales that stretch beyond the bounds of conventional historical method.

From the standpoint of modern scholarship, the Purāṇas are generally classified as mythological and religious texts rather than as systematic historical chronicles. Historians and Indologists tend to use them cautiously, not as straightforward annals, but as sources that reveal how different communities understood their past, their gods, and their social world. The texts are seen as blending folklore, theological reflection, and occasional historical elements, reflecting the religious and cultural concerns of the periods in which they were composed and transmitted. In this scholarly view, their primary purpose is religious and philosophical instruction, not chronological documentation.

Bringing these perspectives together, the Purāṇas can be understood as mythological and theological compositions that sometimes preserve fragments of historical memory. Their power lies less in factual precision and more in the way they articulate a vision of reality in which cosmic order, divine presence, and human duty are intimately connected. To read them fruitfully is to recognize that they speak a different language from that of modern historiography, one in which myth and meaning are inseparable, and where the question of “what happened” is often subordinate to the question of “what leads toward dharma.”