Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn this edited volume, Sree Padma brilliantly introduces the comparative study of contemporary local goddesses as a crucial window on India today that has previously been underrepresented in scholarship. Worship of the goddess in many forms in India is one of the world’s oldest continuous traditions, and Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess shows how and why, by providing lucid discussion of the many ways in which communities have invested and reinvested local goddesses with a diversity of contemporary concerns. Each chapter’s detailed case study breaks new theoretical ground in our understanding of the vital synergy that emerges wherever and whenever people connect local and global in the figure of the goddess. -- Karen Pechilis, Drew University
I am struck by how well this book brings out the vitality of South Asian goddess traditions, particularly in their mobility and the responses they elicit in new situations. These authors have looked for divinity in surprising places, and enriched the possibilities for deepening what we think we know. -- Alfred Hiltebeitel, George Washington University
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Goddesses That Dwell On Earth: A Folk Paradigm of Divine Female Multiplicity Brenda Beck Chapter 2: Constructing Goddess Worship: Colonial Ethnographic and Public Health Discourses in South India Perundevi Srinivasan Chapter 3: From Local Goddess to Locale Goddess: Karumariamman as Divine Mother at a North American Hindu Temple Tracy Pintchman Chapter 4: An Indentured Goddess: Displacement of a Village Deity from Colonial India to Ceylon Sasi Kumar Balasundaram Chapter 5: Creating Realities, Communicating Dreams, Constructing Temple Lore: Anklets for the Goddess’ feet at Thirumeeyachur Vasudha Narayanan Chapter 6: Traveling Goddess– A Study of Uppalamma in Andhra Pradesh Sree Padma Chapter 7: The Leap of the Limping Goddess: Aai Khodiyar of Gujarat Neelima Shukla-Bhatt Chapter 8: Tantric Visions, Local Manifestations: The Cult Centre of Chinnamasta at Rajrappa, Jharkhand R. Mahalakshmi Chapter 9: The Goddess on the Hill: The (Re)invention of a local goddess as Cāmuṇḍī Caleb Simmons Chapter 10: Communicating the Local Discursively: Devi, the Divine feminine as a Contemporary Symbol for Grassroots Feminist Politics Priya Kapoor
