From the standpoint of modern historical scholarship, the Bhagavata Purana is generally understood as a relatively late Purāṇic work, taking shape over several centuries and reaching something close to its present form between the 8th and 10th centuries CE. Many scholars place particular emphasis on the 9th–10th centuries, seeing this as the period when its theology, narrative structure, and literary style coalesced into the text that later tradition came to revere as a unified whole. This dating rests on linguistic features, intertextual references, and comparison with other Purāṇas and devotional literature.

Regarding its geographical setting, the weight of academic opinion points toward South India as the primary milieu of composition. Tamil Nadu is frequently proposed, and some scholars extend the possible region to the Deccan or other parts of South India, reflecting the broader southern Vaiṣṇava and bhakti environment. The text’s devotional mood and theological emphases resonate strongly with the South Indian bhakti currents associated with the Āḻvārs and related Vaiṣṇava traditions, suggesting that it emerged from a culture already steeped in intense personal devotion to Viṣṇu and Kṛṣṇa.

Alongside this historical-critical view, there stands the traditional understanding preserved within the text and its commentarial heritage. In that perspective, the work is attributed to the sage Vyāsa at the threshold of the present age, composed at the end of Dvāpara Yuga and the dawn of Kali Yuga, and first taught in the sacred setting of Naimiṣāraṇya in northern India. This traditional dating functions less as a chronological claim in the modern sense and more as a way of situating the Purana within the timeless unfolding of dharma and divine revelation.

Taken together, these perspectives invite a contemplative reading of the Bhagavata Purana’s “when” and “where” as layered rather than merely factual. Historically, the text appears as a South Indian Vaiṣṇava synthesis of the early medieval period; traditionally, it is received as an ancient, yuga-transcending revelation of Vyāsa. For a spiritual seeker, holding both views side by side can deepen appreciation: the historical lens illuminates the cultural and devotional soil from which the work sprang, while the traditional lens points to its enduring role as a living scripture that speaks across ages and regions.