The Skanda Purāṇa is the largest Mahāpurāṇa, a genre of eighteen Hindu religious texts. The text is devoted mainly to the lilas of Kartikeya, a son of Shiva and Parvati, who is also known as Skanda. The Puranic literature is encyclopedic, and it includes diverse topics such as cosmogony, cosmology, genealogies of gods, goddesses, kings, heroes, sages, and demigods, folk tales, pilgrimages, temples, medicine, astronomy, grammar, mineralogy, humor, love stories, as well as theology and philosophy