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.
The volume investigates two related processes: First, it underscores the manner in which the religious cultures of goddesses are reflexes of larger social processes occurring historically in local contexts.
The volume underscores the manner in which the religious cultures of goddesses are reflexes of larger social processes occurring historically in local contexts and illustrates transformations in how these same goddesses are understood when ...
... Miracles: The Study of Lived Religion.” In Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice, edited by David D. Hall, 3–21. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Padma, Sree. 2014. Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess ...
“The Goddess on the Hill: The (Re)Invention of a Local Hill Goddess as Chamundeshvari.” In Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess: Contemporary Iterations of Hindu Deities on the Move, edited by Sree Padma, 217–44.
Consequently, through the performance of these songs, the balladeers sing the goddesses and gods into the region, situating the deities within a local religious and social landscape and creating a local sacred history or sthalapurana of ...
Vicissitudes of the Goddess: Reconstructions of the Gramadevata in India's Religious Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press. — — — , ed. 2014. Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess: Contemporary Iterations of Hindu Deities on the ...
new kind of transnational religion that functions as an alternative to other forms of transnational Hinduism,” “such as the ... The goddess does not just move from one place to the other but creates herself anew in a fresh paradigm more ...
In Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess: Contemporary Iterations of Hindu Deities on the Move, edited by Sree Padma, 217–244. Lanham, MD: Lexington. Simmons, Caleb. 2014c. “The Goddess and Vaishnavism in Search for Regional Supremacy: ...
Th is makes the aim of the book somewhat ambitious, as it intentionally sets out to be a personal witness to issues of colonization, the constitutional fl aws of an emerging nation, power-mongering politics, racial and ethnic tensions, ...
7 Cynthia Humes, “Vindhyavasini: Local Goddess yet Great Goddess,” in Devi: Goddesses of India, ed. ... 20 Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, “Leap of the Limping Goddess,” in Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess: Contemporary Iterations of Hindu ...