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The Vishnu Purana is one of the eighteen Mahapuranas, a genre of ancient and medieval texts of Hinduism. It is an important Pancharatra text in the Vaishnavism literature. The text is also notable as the earliest Purana to have been translated and published in 1840 CE by HH Wilson, based on manuscripts then available, setting the presumptions and premises about what Puranas may have been. The Vishnu Purana is among the shorter Purana texts, with about 7,000 verses in extant versions. It primarily canters around the Hindu god Vishnu and his avatars such as Krishna, but it praises Brahma and Shiva and asserts that they are dependent on Vishnu. The Purana, states Wilson, is pantheistic and the ideas in it, like other Puranas, are premised on the Vedic beliefs and ideas.Vishnu Purana, like all major Puranas, attributes its author to be sage Veda Vyasa. The actual author(s) and date of its composition are unknown and contested. Estimates of its composition range from 400 BCE to 900 CE. The text was likely composed and rewritten in layers over a period of time, with roots possibly in ancient 1st-millennium BCE texts that have not survived into the modern era. The Padma Purana categorizes Vishnu Purana as a Sattva Purana (Purana that represents goodness and purity).