Vicissitudes of the Goddess

Vicissitudes of the Goddess PDF Author: Sree Padma
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199325030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Drawing on archaeological, artistic, sculptural and inscriptional sources and participant/observer insights, Sree Padma reconstructs a history of goddess worship in India from ancient times (before the rise of Buddhism and bhakti) to contemporary cults of deified women.

Vicissitudes of the Goddess

Vicissitudes of the Goddess PDF Author: Sree Padma
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199325030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Drawing on archaeological, artistic, sculptural and inscriptional sources and participant/observer insights, Sree Padma reconstructs a history of goddess worship in India from ancient times (before the rise of Buddhism and bhakti) to contemporary cults of deified women.

Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess

Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess PDF Author: Sree Padma
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739190024
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Popular religion in village India is overwhelmingly dominated by goddess worship. Goddesses can be nationally well-known like Durga or Kali, or they can be an obscure deity who is only known in a particular rural locale. The origins of a goddess can be both ancient—with many transitions or amalgamations with other cults having occurred along the way—and very recent. While some have tribal origins, others sprout up overnight due to a vivid dream. Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess: Contemporary Iterations of Hindu Divinities on the Move looks at the nature of how and why goddesses are invented and reinvented historically in India and how social hierarchy, gender differences, and modernity play roles in these emerging religious phenomena.

A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses

A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses PDF Author: Michael Slouber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520976215
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Imagining the divine as female is rare—even controversial—in most religions. Hinduism, by contrast, preserves a rich and continuous tradition of goddess worship. A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses conveys the diversity of this tradition by bringing together a fresh array of captivating and largely overlooked Hindu goddess tales from different regions. As the first such anthology of goddess narratives in translation, this collection highlights a range of sources from ancient myths to modern lore. The goddesses featured here battle demons, perform miracles, and grant rare Tantric visions to their devotees. Each translation is paired with a short essay that explains the goddess’s historical and social context, elucidating the ways religion adapts to changing times.

Singing the Goddess into Place

Singing the Goddess into Place PDF Author: Caleb Simmons
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143848867X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Singing the Goddess into Place examines Chamundi of the Hill, a collection of songs that tells the stories of the gods and goddesses of the region around the city of Mysore in southern Karnataka. The ballad actively transforms the region into a land where gods and goddesses live, embedding these deities within the social worlds of their devotees and remapping southern Karnataka into sacred geography connected through networks of devotion and pilgrimage. In this in-depth study of the songs and their context, Caleb Simmons not only provides the first English-language translation of these songs but brings to light the unstudied folk perspectives on the foundational myth of Mysore and its urban history. Singing the Goddess into Place demonstrates how folk narratives reflect local context while also actively working to upend social inequities based on caste and ritual/devotional practices. By delving into this world, the book helps us understand how a landscape is transformed through people's relationship with it and how this relationship helps build meaning for the communities that call it home.

The Oxford History of Hinduism: The Goddess

The Oxford History of Hinduism: The Goddess PDF Author: Mandakranta Bose
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191079685
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
The Oxford History of Hinduism: The Goddess provides a critical exposition of the Hindu idea of the divine feminine, or Devī, conceived as a singularity expressed in many forms. With the theological principles examined in the opening chapters, the book proceeds to describe and expound historically how individual manifestations of Devī have been imagined in Hindu religious culture and their impact upon Hindu social life. In this quest the contributors draw upon the history and philosophy of major Hindu ideologies, such as the Purāṇic, Tāntric, and Vaiṣṇava belief systems. A particular distinction of the book is its attention not only to the major goddesses from the earliest period of Hindu religious history but also to goddesses of later origin, in many cases of regional provenance and influence. Viewed through the lens of worship practices, legend, and literature, belief in goddesses is discovered as the formative impulse of much of public and private life. The influence of the goddess culture is especially powerful on women's life, often paradoxically situating women between veneration and subjection. This apparent contradiction arises from the humanization of goddesses while acknowledging their divinity, which is central to Hindu beliefs. In addition to studying the social and theological aspect of the goddess ideology, the contributors take anthropological, sociological, and literary approaches to delineate the emotional force of the goddess figure that claims intense human attachments and shapes personal and communal lives.

South Asian Goddesses and the Natural Environment

South Asian Goddesses and the Natural Environment PDF Author: Marika Vicziany
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 180327672X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This multidisciplinary collection presents 11 essays ranging from the pre-Vedic to the modern era and incorporating research on Hindu, Buddhist and tribal cultures. Authors ask whether the worship of goddesses, strongly linked to fertility rituals, might have mitigated the ecological decline of South Asia in the pre-British and post-colonial eras.

Handbook of Indian History

Handbook of Indian History PDF Author: Lavanya Vemsani
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819762073
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description


Mother of the Gods

Mother of the Gods PDF Author: Philippe Borgeaud
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 080187985X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Worshiped throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, the "Mother of the Gods" was known by a variety of names. Among peoples of Asia Minor, where her cult first began, she often shared the names of local mountains. The Greeks commonly called her Cybele, the name given to her by the Phrygians of Asia Minor, and identified her with their own mother goddesses Rhea, Gaia, and Demeter. The Romans adopted her worship at the end of the Second Punic War and called her Mater Magna, Great Mother. Her cult became one of the three most important mystery cults in the Roman Empire, along with those of Mithras and Isis. And as Christianity took hold in the Roman world, ritual elements of her cult were incorporated into the burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary. In Mother of the Gods, Philippe Borgeaud traces the journey of this divine figure through Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome between the sixth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. He examines how the Mother of the Gods was integrated into specific cultures, what she represented to those who worshiped her, and how she was used as a symbol in art, myth, and even politics. The Mother of the Gods was often seen as a dualistic figure: ancestral and foreign, aristocratic and disreputable, nurturing and dangerous. Borgeaud's challenging and nuanced portrait opens new windows on the ancient world's sophisticated religious beliefs and shifting cultural identities.

Amar Akbar Anthony

Amar Akbar Anthony PDF Author: William Elison
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674504488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
The 1977 blockbuster Amar Akbar Anthony about the heroics of three Bombay brothers separated in childhood became a classic of Hindi cinema and a touchstone of Indian popular culture. Beyond its comedy and camp is a potent vision of social harmony, but one that invites critique, as the authors show.

The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess

The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess PDF Author: Phyllis K. Herman
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443807028
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The Constant and Changing Faces of the Goddess: Goddess Traditions of Asia contains essays written by established scholars in the field that trace the multiplicity of Asian goddesses: their continuities, discontinuities, and importance as symbols of wisdom, power, transformation, compassion, destruction, and creation. The essays demonstrate that while treatments of the goddess may vary regionally, culturally, and historically, it is possible to note some consistencies in the overall picture of the goddess in Asia. The book provides a comprehensive treatment of the goddess, culminating in the selections that draw from research on Indian, Nepali, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese traditions, seldom found in other works of similar subject. The volume will be useful for students in religious studies, gender studies, Asian studies, and women's studies. With the intent of making the volume truly broad in scope, an effort has been made to include works written by art historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars. Culture cannot be separated from religion; they are intertwined as an organic whole, and variations manifest themselves in the rituals and daily lives of the people. In this sense, all the essays are interconnected: the goddess manifests in many forms and appeals to differing aspects of a particular culture as a paradigm of the divine feminine.