It is the only surviving Indian text that includes a detailed description of Greeks who advanced into India after Alexander the Great, and the Indo-Greek conquest of Pataliputra, the capital of the Mauryan Empire.
[3][4][note 1] It includes mythology, but also chronicles the Magadha empire, Maurya emperor Shalishuka, the Shunga dynasty the Yavanas, and Sakas.
[6] The invasion of the Yavanas (i.e., Indo-Greeks, under Demetrius I or Menander I, c. 180 BCE) is described in a rather detailed account:[4] The extant manuscripts of the Yuga Purana are in poor form and considered by scholars as highly corrupted over its history, although recent "research has [...] been concerned with establishing a more acceptable text".
[3] Its importance is contested, with claims ranging from possibly the "oldest surviving text" with Purana in its title, to "quite late and worthless" manuscript.
"[14] John Mitchiner suggests it to be one of the useful, important and oldest Purana giving it an estimate of c. 25 BCE because of the archaic, unusual Sanskrit found in the text.