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". Its importance is contested, with claims ranging from possibly the "oldest surviving text" with Purana in its title, to "quite late and worthless" manuscript. The few manuscripts discovered are highly inconsistent, and early 20th-century translators reconstructed the manuscript by "liberally altering" proper names in the text to arrive at "guesses at truth" that these manuscripts might have intended. Scholars in the early 20th century (Fleet in 1912, and later William Tarn in 1938) stated that this text is a late text and dismissed the "Yuga Purana" as historically worthless, with Tarn adding that "naturally, I cannot be sure". However, the situation has been improved by the discovery of eight more manuscripts by Indologist John Mitchiner, who has produced a complete translation of the text.