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, rivers and animals including boars, buffalo, serpents and monkeys. Immensely varied and bursting with colour and life, they demonstrate the Hindu belief in the limitless possibilities of the world - from the teeming miracles of creation to the origins of the incarnation of Death who eventually touches them all.

Hindu Myths [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2005] WENDY DONIGER OFLAHERTY

Politics & Social Sciences

WENDY DONIGER

Social Sciences

Penguin??Books

The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world.
Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother's lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother's vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority.
At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but--dare he admit it?--strangely on target.
Here the internationally renowned writer J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello's own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction--Coetzee brings all these elements into play.
As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields. Coetzee's text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation. Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation.

The Lives of Animals (The University Center for Human Values Series)

Literature & Fiction

Marjorie Garber

Peter Singer

Barbara Smuts

J.M.Coetzee

Literary

Princeton University Press

This series aims to meet a fundamental need in the study of religions, namely that for new, reliable translations of major texts. Each volume in the series covers a wide range of literature, political issues, poetry and popular writings. Attention is paid to daily religious life as exemplified in worship or in law, as well as to great movements of thought.

Hinduism (Textual Sources for the Study of Religion)

Religion & Spirituality

Manchester University Press

Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares Horses in Indian Myth and History

University of Virginia Press

An unparalleled opportunity for audiences to view rarely seen contemporary art from four major indigenous artistic traditions in India, Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India showcases works from the Gond and Warli communities of central India, the Mithila region of Bihar, and the narrative scroll painters of West Bengal. The exhibition features 47 exceptional paintings and drawings, selected from private collections in the United States and Europe, by 24 significant indigenous artists including Jangarh Singh Shyam, Jivya Soma Mashe, Sita Devi, and Swarna Chitrakar, among others. Many Visions, Many Versions explores the breadth and variety of cultural traditions in India, revealing a dynamic aesthetic that remains deeply rooted in traditional culture, yet vitally responsive to issues of global concern. Rather than taking a conventional approach to exhibiting these four distinct indigenous artistic traditions by separating them into sections distinguished by tribal and cultural affinities, the curators intentionally display the paintings thematically; accentuating the shared cultural features and contemporary concerns of these four communities that underlies the diversity of the artists unique expressive forms, techniques, and styles. The exhibition is divided into four broad categories: Myth and Cosmology, Nature real and imagined, Village Life, and Contemporary Explorations. India s rise as an Asian power on the global scene has focused the world s attention on the country and its culture. For American audiences eager to know more about Indian art, Many Visions, Many Versions offers an opportunity for viewers of all ages to learn about life and culture in India through these remarkable artworks.

Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India

Aurogeeta Das

Umesh Gaur

Frank Korom

B.R. Mani

and David Szanton

International Arts & Artists

The ancient Egyptians were the first to examine the afterlife in a book composed between 1567 and 1085 BC. This collection of funerary texts has historically been referred to as the Book of the Dead or Book of Going Forth by Day. For the Egyptians, the Book of the Dead was a vital part of the quest for immortality. Millennia later, the second Book of the Dead, written in Tibet dating from the eighth century CE, tells a similar tale, but this journey has an entirely different end―rebirth here on earth, instead of in another world. Using watercolors on papyrus―an echo of the Book of the Dead incantations written on papyrus scrolls buried with mummies in ancient Egypt―this collection creates a contemporary interpretation of how human beings contemplate their earthly and spiritual existence. Phillips's work is a vivid visual study into universal and timeless themes of life, love, fear, hope, and sublime happiness that combine into the human experience.

John Ransom Phillips: A Contemporary Book of the Dead

Arts & Photography

Zahi Hawass

History & Criticism

Lucia|Marquand

WINGED STALLIONS AND WICKED MARES : HORSES IN INDIAN MYTH AND HISTORY

Speaking Tiger

After the War: The Last Books of the Mahabharatha

Dreams. Illusions. Reincarnation. Karma.\nDreams are a serious matter in Indian myth and religions, especially Hinduism. But are they maya (illusion), lila (God’s play), or an awakening to our real selves? Are we living in a dream dreamt by the Author of the universe as we know it? Are dreams, then, an insight into the reality of that universe? Do they prove the ‘nothingness’ of the world we see or the substantial reality of ‘illusion’ itself?\nIn this dazzling short book, Wendy Doniger, one of the world’s great scholars of Hindu texts and myths, tries to unravel the dream adventure—encompassing dreaming, forgetting, rebirth and karma—with the help of fascinating stories from the Yogavasishtha (regarded as the greatest text ever written on the subject), the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana and the Matsya Purana.\nThe stories she retells—whether of the monk who dreamt of Jivata who in turn dreamt of a hundred dreaming souls; Rama and Krishna, who often forget that they are God; or the sage Markandeya, who roamed inside the belly of Vishnu and couldn’t tell whether he was inhabiting illusion or had escaped it—catapult us, readers and dreamers, into new understandings of our waking life.

The Dream Narrative

In this dazzling book―which analyses scores of stories from the Puranas, Mahabharata, Ramayana and Yogavasishtha, among other texts―one of the world’s great scholars of Indian and world mythology writes about our myths, dreams and illusions and what they tell us about reality; about self and nonself; about our perception of the world and the world’s perception of us; about ‘our dreams of God and God’s dream of us’. *** ‘Wendy Doniger…weaves a brilliant analysis of the complex role of dreams and dreaming in Indian religion, philosophy, literature, and art… In her creative hands, enchanting Indian myths and stories illuminate and are illuminated by authors as different as Aeschylus, Plato, Freud, Jung, Thomas Kuhn, Borges… This richly suggestive book challenges many of our fundamental assumptions about ourselves and our world.’―New York Times Book Review ‘Dazzling analysis… The book is firm and convincing once you appreciate its central point, which is that in traditional Hindu thought the dream isn’t an accident or byway of experience, [it] actually embodies the whole problem of knowledge… [Doniger] wants to make your mental flesh creep, and she succeeds.’―Village Voice ‘[Doniger] uses her encyclopedic command of the literature on dreams and illusions (both Eastern and Western) to take us on a dizzying spin through multiple levels of reality… A marvelous book recommended to students of religion and philosophy, to devotees [of] metaphysical brainteasers…or to any reader who enjoys a challenge.’―Booklist

Dreams, Illusion and others realities

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Books by WENDY DONIGER