The Dharma Sashtras are the books that are expressly called Smritis.
The three great law-givers are:
1) Manu, who wrote the Manu Smriti or Manava Dharma-Sastra,
2) Yagnavalkya, who wrote the Yagnavalkya Smriti which is next in importance to Manu’s Smriti and
3) Parasara, who wrote the Parasara Smriti.
These are the three great law-givers and their Dharma-Sastras are still studied today to gather guidelines for social conduct.
In all, there are 18 Dharma Sashtras. The other 15 are those of Vishnu, Daksha, Samvarta, Vyasa, Harita, Satatapa, Vasishtha, Yama, Apastamba, Gautama, Devata, Sankhya-Likhita, Usana, Atri and Saunaka.
The Puranas and the Great Epics are expressly Itihases, historical works, but they also come under the broad range of the Smritis.
The Puranas are akin to the historical epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. There are five characteristics to the Puranas: history, cosmology: a combination of astrology and astronomy with symbolic illustrations chalking out philosophic concepts, creation after the original being came into existence, genealogy of Kings and Manvantaras – the period of Manu’s rule for 71 celestial yugas.
According to legend, Ved Vyasa is reputed to be the compiler of the Puranas in each age. In this Kaliyuga he is Krishna Dvaipayana.
More practically, since the Puranas were written for ordinary people the sages who wrote them avoided high philosophic thoughts and ideals and transplanted them with allegorical allusions that went down well with the people.Thus, the Puranas are a great and interesting potpourri of myths and legends involving the lives of Gods, Goddesses, kings, sages and others. Through these simple tales the sages have illustrated the eternal principles of religion to the common people.
In all there are 18 Puranas together with an equal number of Upa-Puranas or subsidiary Puranas. The 18 Puranas can be subdivided into
6 Rajasic Puranas praising Brahma,
6 Sattvic Puranas praising Vishnu and
6 Tamasic Puranas praising Shiva.
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