Wendy Doniger is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and the author of over 30 books, most recently The Hindus: An Alternative History.

• Introduction: Foreword into the Past ; A Chronology ; I. On Being Hindu ; Hinduism by Any Other Name ; Are Hindus Monotheists or Polytheists? ; Three (or More) Forms of the Three (or More) - Fold Path in Hinduism ; The Concept of Heresy in Hinduism ; Eating Karma ; Medical and Mythical Constructions of the Body in Sakskrit Texts ; Death and Rebirth in Hinduism ; Forgetting and Re-awakening to Incarnation ; Assume the Position: The Fight over the Body of Yoga ; The Toleration of Intolerance in Hinduism ; The Politics of Hinduism Tomorrow ; II. Gods, Humans and Anti-Gods ; Saguna and Nirguna Images of the Deity ; You Can't Get Here from There: The Logical Paradox of Hindu Creation Myths ; Together Apart: Changing Ethical Implications of Hindu Cosmologies ; God's Body, or, the Lingam Made Flesh: Conflicts over the Representation of Shiva ; Sacrifice and Subsitution: Ritual Mystification and Mythical Demystification in Hinduism ; The Scrapbook of Undeserved Salvation: The Kedara Khanda of the Skanda Purana ; III. Women and Other Genders ; Why Should a Brahmin Tell You Whom to Marry?: A Deconstruction of the Laws of Manu ; Saranyu/Samjna: The Sun and the Shadow ; The Clever Wife in Indian Mythology ; Rings of Rejection and Recognition in Ancient India ; The Third Nature: Gender Inversions in the Kamasutra ; Bisexuality and Transsexuality Among the Hindu Gods ; Transsexual Transformations of Subjectivity and Memory in Hindu Mythology ; IV. Kama and other Seductions ; The Control of Addiction in Ancient India ; Reading the Kamasutra: It Isn't All About Sex ; The Mythology of the Kamasutra ; From Kama to Karma: The Resurgence of Puritanism in Contemporary India ; V. Horses and Other Animals ; The Ambivalence of Ahimsa ; Zoomorphism in Ancient India: Humans More Bestial Than Beasts ; The Mythology of Horses in India ; The Submarine Mare in the Mythology of Shiva ; Indra as the Stallion's Wife ; Dogs as Dalits in Indian Literature ; Sacred Cows and Beefeaters ; VI. Illusion and Reality in the Hindu Epics ; Impermanence and Eternity in Hindu Epic, Art and Performance ; Shadows of the Ramayana ; Women in the Mahabharata ; The History of Ekalavya ; VII. On Not Being Hindu ; "I Have Scinde": Orientalism and Guilt ; Doniger O'Flaherty on Doniger ; You Can't Make an Omelette ; The Forest-Dweller ; Appendix I: Limericks on Hinduism ; Appendix II: Essays on Hinduism by Wendy Doniger ; List of Abbreviations ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index

For anyone seeking a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Hinduism, this book is a must read.