Content

 Several Puranas, such as the Matsya Purana,list "five characteristics" or "five signs" of a Purana. These are called the Pancha Lakshana ( pañcalakṣaṇa), and are topics covered by a Purana:

1. Sarga: cosmogony or the creation of the world
2. Pratisarga: cosmogony and cosmology
3. Vamśa: genealogy of the gods, sages and kings
4. Manvañtara: cosmic cycles, history of the world during the time of one patriarch
5. Vamśānucaritam: Account of royal dynasties dynasty, including the Suryavamshi and Chandravamshi kings

A few Puranas, such as the most popular Bhagavata Purana, add five more characteristics to expand this list to ten:

1. Utaya: karmic links between the deities, sages, kings and the various living beings
2. Ishanukatha: tales about a god
3. Nirodha: finale, cessation
4. Mukti: moksha, spiritual liberation
5. Ashraya: refuge

These five or ten sections weave in biographies, myths, geography, medicine, astronomy, Hindu temples, pilgrimage to distant real places, rites of passage, charity, ethics, duties, rights, dharma, divine intervention in cosmic and human affairs, love stories, festivals, theosophy and philosophy. The Puranas link gods to men, both generally and in religious bhakti context. Here the Puranic literature follows a general pattern. It starts with introduction, a future devotee is described as ignorant about the god yet curious, the devotee learns about the god and this begins the spiritual realization, the text then describes instances of God's grace which begins to persuade and convert the devotee, the devotee then shows devotion which is rewarded by the god, the reward is appreciated by the devotee and in return performs actions to express further devotion.

The Puranas, states Flood, document the rise of the theistic traditions such as those based on Vishnu, Shiva and the goddess Devi and include respective mythology, pilgrimage to holy places, rituals and genealogies. The bulk of these texts in Flood's view were established by 500 CE, in the Gupta era though amendments were made later. Along with inconsistencies, common ideas are found throughout the corpus but it is not possible to trace the lines of influence of one Purana upon another so the corpus is best viewed as a synchronous whole. An example of similar stories woven across the Puranas, but in different versions, include the lingabhava – the "apparition of the linga". The story features Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, the three major deities of Hinduism, who get together, debate, and after various versions of the story, in the end the glory of Shiva is established by the apparition of linga. This story, state Bonnefoy, and Doniger, appears in Vayu Purana 1.55, Brahmanda Purana 1.26, Shiva Purana's Rudra Samhita Sristi Khanda 15, Skanda Purana's chapters 1.3, 1.16 and 3.1, and other Puranas.

The texts are in Sanskrit as well as regional languages, and almost entirely in narrative metric couplets