
Shiv Vidyeshwara Samhita
The Shiva Purana contains chapters with Shiva-centered cosmology, mythology, relationship between Gods, ethics, yoga, tirtha (pilgrimage) sites, bhakti, rivers and geography, and other topics.[10][2][11] The text is an important source of historic information on different types and theology behind Shaivism in early 2nd-millennium CE.[12] The oldest surviving chapters of the Shiva Purana have significant Advaita Vedanta philosophy,[6] which is mixed in with theistic elements of bhakti.[13]
In the 19th and 20th century, the Vayu Purana was sometimes titled as Shiva Purana, and sometimes proposed as a part of the complete Shiva Purana.[14] With the discovery of more manuscripts, modern scholarship considers the two texts as different,[1] with Vayu Purana as the more older text composed sometime before the 2nd-century CE.[12][15][16] Some scholars list it as a Mahapurana, while some state it is an Upapurana.[6][17]