There is a large genre of Hindu religious texts that narrates the stories, legends, and religious significance of a particular place; they are known as sthala mahatmya or sthala puranas. Most of the famous religious places, temples and rivers have their own sthala purana or mahatmya. As an example, the famous Chidambaram temple in Tamil Nadu has six sthala puranas written in both Sanskrit and Tamil over the last thousand years. In the same way, the major rivers of India have their own river mahatmyas that describe their origins, glories, and religious significance. Similarly, a sacred region will have its own mahatmya, such as the Pampa mahatmya. Most mahatmya genre of religious texts claim to be part of major Puranas, especially the Skanda Purana, but mostly these texts are usually found as stand-alone manuscripts, and not as a part of a puranic corpus.

It is through the study of these texts that we can understand the Hindu religious geography, as well as the religious imagination of the Hindus for whom the external world is animated by the presence of divinities who are easily accessible to a fervent devotee. Therefore, Tattva Heritage Foundation is committed to getting some of the important work of the sthala mahatmya genre critically edited and translated into English, so that it is accessible to a wider audience.

Our first project is the critical edition and translation of the important 17^th-century Yadavagiri Mahatmya. Consisting of 12 chapters, the text narrates the religious significance of Melkote as one of the foremost Vaishnava tirtha kshetras. The work will be undertaken under the aegis of Samskriti Foundation, which is a Mysore based organization engaged in the activity of preservation and propagation of the cultural and scientific heritage of India. It is headed by a renowned Sanskrit scholar and a senior professor at the Maharaja’s Sanskrit College in Mysore, Shri MA Alwar.

An edition with an English translation will be published by the end of this year. Following the successful completion of this edition, we plan to undertake many more such projects in the future.