An engrossing and definitive narrative account of history and myth that offers a new way of understanding one of the world's oldest major religions, "The Hindus" elucidates the relationship between recorded history and imaginary worlds.
In this text, the author shows how to make sense of, and learn from, the diversity of past and present cultures. Drawing on traditions ranging from the Hebrew Bible to the "Bhagavad Gita", Doniger examines other cultures and finds in the world's myths a way to talk about experiences shared across time and space. Doniger shows that myths bridge the ...
Recorded in sacred Sanskrit texts, including the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, "Hindu Myths" are thought to date back as far as the tenth century BCE. Here in these seventy-five seminal myths are the many incarnations of Vishnu, who saves mankind from destruction, and the mischievous child Krishna, alongside stories of the minor gods, demons, ...
The earliest of the four Hindu religious scriptures known as the Vedas, and the first extensive composition to survive in any Indo-European language, the Rig Veda (c. 1200 900 BC) is a collection of over 1,000 individual Sanskrit hymns. A work of intricate beauty, it provides a unique insight into early Indian mythology, religion and culture. This ...
This is a comprehensive reference and research source that offers new ways to understand the power of myth and tradition across cultures and centuries.
Other People's Myths celebrates the universal art of storytelling, and the rich diversity of stories that people live by. Drawing on Biblical parables, Greek myths, Hindu epics, and the modern mythologies of Woody Allen and soap operas, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty encourages us to feel anew the force of myth and tradition in our lives, and in the ...
Many cultures have myths about self-imitation, stories about people who pretend to be someone else pretending to be them, in effect masquerading as themselves. This great theme, in literature and in life, tells us that people put on masks to discover who they really are under the masks they usually wear, so that the mask reveals rather than ...
These 130 articles explore mythologies in societies from India to Japan. Among the many topics are Buddhist and Hindu symbolic systems, myth in pre-Islamic Iran, Indonesian rites of passage, Chinese cosmology and demons, and Japanese conceptions of the afterlife and the "vital spirit." The mythological traditions of Turkey, Korea, Tibet, and ...
Questioning the conventional depiction of India as a nation divided between religious communities, Gottschalk shows that individuals living in India have multiple identities, some of which cut across religious boundaries. The stories narrated by villagers living in the northern state of Bihar depict everyday social interactions that transcend the ...
Hindu and Greek mythologies teem with stories of women and men who are doubled, who double themselves, who are seduced by gods doubling as mortals and whose bodies are split or divided. This text recounts and compares a vast range of these tales from ancient Greece and India, with occasional recourse to more recent "double features" from "Dr. ...
Selected and translated by George Economou, this sexy, modern collection of ancient Greek love poetry is ideal for readers of Pinsky and "Playboy" alike. In a collection of fresh, accessible translations, Hellenistic master poets and two dozen other writers explore the power of Eros.
This critical study explores the history of the literary device defined here as the "bed trick," in which a sexual encounter ensues when one of the partners has mistaken the other's identity. This work gathers bed tricks from ancient through modern sources, exploring Hindu, Chinese, African, Arabic, Greek, and Roman folklores and myths, as well as ...
This is a study of the Bengali Kartabhaja sect and its place in the broader movement of Tantrism, an Indian religious movement employing purposely shocking sexual language and rituals. Urban looks closely at the relationship between the rise of the Kartabhajas, who flourished at the turn of the 19th century, and the changing economic context of ...
The seventy-two entries in this volume explore, among other topics, the history, geography, and religion of Greece, Plato's mythology and philosophy, the powers of marriage in Greece, heroes and gods of war in the Greek epic, and origins of mankind in Greek myths. Ancient Egyptian cosmology, anthropology, rituals, and religion--closely linked to ...
In this revised translation by one of the world's foremost Sanskrit scholars, listeners will gain new insight into the meaning of the "Kamasutra"--a practice of close intimate relationship, the divine meaning of love, sensuality, desire, and romance.
Assessing of the state of the study of myth, this text explores the possibilities for charting a methodological middle course that takes into account both the comparative and the contextual issues raised since 1985.
This volume begins with Roman myths and traces their influence in early Christian and later European literature. Ninety-five entries by leading scholars cover subjects such as sacrificial cults and rites in pre-Roman Italy, Roman religion and its origins, the mythologies of paganism, the survival of the ancient gods in the Middle Ages and the ...
This work explores the site of a woman's voice and identity - her head. The female head threatens to disrupt the classic gender distinctions that link men to speech, identity, and mind while relegating women to silence, anonymity and flesh. The contributors to this collection argue that the objectification of women as sexual and reproductive ...
Our Miniature Edition abridgment of one of the world's best-known texts is accompanied by lush, sensuous illustrations. The oldest existing Hindu book of erotic love, the Kamasutra still has much to offer modern lovers looking for new paths to pleasure and enlightenment.
King Harsha, who reigned over the kingdom of Kanauj from 606 to 647 CE, composed two Sanskrit plays about the mythical figures of King Udayana his queen, Vasava datta, and two of his co-wives. The plays abound in mistaken identities, both political and erotic. The characters masquerade as one another and, occasionally, as themselves and each play ...
Sexuality and spirituality are inextricably linked in the mythology and texts of ancient India. At the heart of this culture's teachings are sensuous stories of the gods making love that demonstrate the power and purpose of human passion. On "Erotic Spirituality and the Kamasutra, Wendy Doniger guides us through India's seductive tales and hidden ...
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