Brahma Purana
It is listed as the first Maha-Purana in all the anthologies, and therefore is also called Adi Purana, although there is another Sanskrit text which is named Adi Purana classified as one of the Upa Puranas.
The name Brahma Purana is misleading and apocryphal because the extant manuscripts of this text have nothing to do with the Hindu god Brahma, and are actually a compilation of Sthala Mahatmyas (greatness of pilgrimage sites) and sections on diverse topics.Out of 245 chapters, 18 chapters of the Brahma Purana cover the cosmology,mythology, genealogy, manvantara (cosmic time cycles) and topics that are required to make a text belong to the Puranic genre of literature. Other chapters cover Sanskara (rite of passage), summary of Dharmasastra, its theories on the geography of earth, summary of Samkhya and Yoga theories, and other topics. While many chapters of the Brahma Purana praise temples and pilgrimage, chapters 38-40 of the text, a part of embedded Saura Purana, present arguments that are highly critical of the theistic theories and devotional worship proposals of 13th-century Madhvacharya and Dvaita Vedanta sub-school of Hindu philosophies.
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