Heroic Shāktism

Since the early twentieth century there have been three broad trends in the study of Indic goddesses. The first was shaped by evolutionary philosophy and anthropology in holding that societies grew from ‘mother-right’ in their primitive stages to those which upheld ‘father-right’. This tradition, represented by scholars such as Ramaprasad Chanda (1916) and N.N. Bhattacharya (1971, 1977), studied Sanskritic texts such as the Veda and Purana for the names of goddesses that established ‘India’ as a member in a broad group of societies with similar goddess traditions, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia. A second trend was associated with the growth of psychoanalytic theory that overlapped with, and shaded into, the study of symbols, forms of representation, and their meanings. This trend was fruitful in the discipline of religious studies as institutionalised in the United States, especially from the mid-1970s well into the 1990s. Studies by scholars such as Wendy O’Flaherty, Gananath Obeyesekere, David Kinsley and David Hawley consolidated the field considerably. These trends were complemented by feminist movements at the same time, which inspired many scholars of religion as well as of art history and anthropology to pay ever greater attention to goddesses. Bihani Sarkar draws upon all three methodological traditions in the book under review as she attempts to open a fourth line of enquiry—the centrality of goddess-worship to the making of ancient Indian kingship

Ancient history · Cult · Mesopotamia · Monarchy · Representation (politics · Sociology · Theology · Throne · Worship · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Law · Philosophy