Purāṇa as a Way of Worldmaking

Abstract

Rather than approaching purāṇa as a static genre of Sanskrit literature, this introduction to the inaugural issue of PURANA Media reconceives it as a practice of worldmaking that operates across diverse media to render the primordial past proximate and experientially present. Drawing on theories of symbolic world construction and ontological “worlding,” we show how purāṇa fuses cosmology, narrative, and ritual into a generative cultural form that continually reconfigures ethical, political, and affective life. The contributions to this issue explore purāṇic practice through visual, performative, and ritual media, tracing the layered ways in which primordial time is made active in the relative present. Together, they invite a reorientation in method by foregrounding purāṇa as a plural and adaptive tradition whose meanings emerge through ongoing reinvention.