Indian Religions Podcast
Date: 13. October 2020

Michael Slouber's new book A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses: Tales of the Feminine Divine from India and Beyond (University of California Press, 2021) surveys the diversity of India's feminine divine tradition by bringing together a fresh array of captivating and largely overlooked Hindu goddess narratives from different regions. As the first such anthology of goddess narratives in translation, it highlights a range of sources from ancient myths to modern lore. The goddesses in this book battle demons, perform miracles, and grant rare Tantric visions to their devotees. Each translation is paired with a short essay that explains the goddesses­­s historical and social context, demonstrating the ways religion changes ov­­er time. It is also illustrated with 25 line drawings and samples of the original scripts

For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship.

Similar Posts

See All
14. August 2025Intellectual History
India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things

India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things

The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science discourse, decolonize …

07. August 2025South Asian Studies
Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta

Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta

The Krama School of the Trika Saivism of Kashmir, more familiar as Kalikrama in the contemporary parlance, has turned out to be the most crucial among the monistic Saiva traditions of medieval Kashmir after the Pratyabhijna school, a scenario people could …

31. July 2025Ancient History
Invisible Fire

Invisible Fire

Invisible Fire (ELIPSA, 2021) by Joanna Jurewicz explores early Hindu philosophy through the Manusmṛti, Bhagavadgītā, and Mokṣadharma, showing that reality is a single cognitive field manifesting through subject-object perception. Drawing from Vedic roots …