The Garuda Purana is one of 18 Mahāpurāṇa texts in Hinduism. It is a part of the Vaishnavism literature corpus, primarily centering around the Hindu god Vishnu. It was composed in Sanskrit and is today also available in various languages like Gujarati and English. The earliest version of the text may have been composed in the first millennium CE, but it was likely expanded and changed over a long period of time.The Garuda Purana text, known in many versions, contains more than 15,000 verses. Its chapters encyclopedically deal with a highly diverse collection of topics, including cosmology, mythology, relationship between gods, ethics, good versus evil, various schools of Hindu philosophies, the theory of Yoga, the theory of "heaven and hell" with "karma and rebirth", ancestral rites, and soteriology; rivers and geography, types of minerals and stones, testing methods for gems for their quality; listing of plants and herbs, various diseases and their symptoms, various medicines, aphrodisiacs, and prophylactics; astronomy, astrology, the moon and planets, and the Hindu calendar and its basis; architecture, home building, and essential features of a Hindu temple; rites of passage, charity and gift making, economy, thrift, duties of a king, politics, state officials and their roles and how to appoint them; genres of literature, and rules of grammar. The final chapters discuss how to practice Yoga (Samkhya and Advaita types), personal development, and the benefits of self-knowledge.The Padma Purana categorizes the Garuda Purana—along with the Bhagavata Purana, the Vishnu Purana, and itself—as a Sattva Purana (a Purana that represents goodness and purity). The text, like all Mahapuranas, is attributed to the sage Veda Vyāsa in the Hindu tradition.
