Seeking Mahādevī

Tracy Pintchman is Associate Professor of Hindu Studies at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition, also published by SUNY Press.

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation Introduction: Identity Construction and the Hindu Great GoddessTracy Pintchman 1. The Tantric andVedantic Identity of the Great Goddess in the Devi Gita of the Devi-Bhagavata PuranaC. Machenzie Brown 2. Mahadevi as Mother: The Oriya Hindu Vision of RealityUsha Menon 3. Ambiguous and Definitive: The Greatness of Goddess Vaisno DeviMark Edwin Rohe 4. The Goddess as Fount of the Universe: Shared Visions and Negotiated Allegiances in Puranic Accounts of CosmogenesisTracy Pintchman 5. Waves of Beauty, Rivers of Blood: Constructing the Goddess in KeralaSarah Caldwell 6. From Village to City: Transforming Goddesses in Urban Andhra PradeshSree Padma 7. Reconstructing the Split Goddess as Sakti in a Tamil VillageElaine Craddock 8. Perfecting the Mother's Silence: Dream, Devotion, and Family in the Deification of Sharada DeviJeffrey J. Kripal 9. Goddesses and the Goddess in Hinduism: Constructing the Goddess through Religious ExperienceKathleen M. Erndl 10. What Is a "Goddess" and What Does it Mean to "Construct" One?Thomas B. Coburn Glossary References List of Contributors Index

"The creativity of these essays, as well as their ability to point to possible future paths of study, will be greatly welcome to general scholars of Indology as well as those interested in gender and religion and South Asia. After reading them, one wants to continue to seek Mahadevi in all her changing forms." — Journal of the American Oriental Society"I like the way the book addresses the issue of unity and diversity (is there one Goddess or several) which is done explicitly in a few chapters and implicitly in others." — David Kinsley, author of The Goddesses' Mirror: Visions of the Divine from East and West"There is great popular and scholarly interest in the topic of the imaging of feminine divinity in general, and Hindu goddesses in particular. Many of the contributors present material on contemporary religious practices, as well as 'images,' and such material is always welcome in the field of the study of Indian religion." — Leslie C. Orr, author of Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu