Description: The essays in this collection address the problem of Hindu women's relationship to authority, both within and without the textual traditions of Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi, and English. The authors adopt a method of close textual and ethnographic reading, which results in some surprisingly new and subtle ways of interpreting older, more "classical" discourses, such as Veda and Mimamsa, as well as newer discourses, such as the RSS use of the Devimahatmya.
Review Quotes: "The singular achievement of this collection--and it is truly groundbreaking--is its focus on quite specific intellectual, spiritual, and ritual contexts in order to examine the status of women in the history of Hinduism. . . . The book is unique in many ways. The scholars are all women, all are experts in Sanskrit or regional languages in India, all are trained in the most modern research methodologies, and all are theoretically astute, with penetrating feminist and critical analysis."--Choice