Contents: Introduction/Cynthia Ann Humes and Rachel Fell McDermott. I. Surprising Finds in Familiar Texts: 1. Engendering alternative power relations: The Viraj in the Vedic tradition/Kumkum Roy. 2. Once upon a time the supreme power: the theological rise and fall of Laksmi in Pancaratra scriptures/Sanjukta Gupta. 3. Sita fights while Rama Swoons: A Sakta perspectives on the Ramayana/Thomas B. Coburn. II. Rethinking blood, cadavers, and death: 4. Traditions of human sacrifice in ancient and tribal India and their relation to Saktism/Francesco Brighenti. 5. Sitting on the corpse's Chest: the Tantric ritual of Sava Sadhana and its variations in Modern Bengal/June McDaniel. 6. Corpses, severed heads, and sex: reflections on the Dasamahavidyas/David R. Kinsley. III. The contributions of art history: 7. The northernmost representation of an Indian Goddess of power/Bratindra Nath Mukherjee. 8. An unnoticed form of Devi from Bengal and the challenges of art historical analysis/Gautam Sengupta. IV. Experiencing Sakta Power: 9. A festival for Jagaddhatri and the power of localized religion in West Bengal/Rachel Fell McDermott. 10. Shashibhushan Dasgupta's lotus: realizing the sublime in contemporary tantric studies/Jeffrey J. Kripal. 11. Magical lovers, sisters, and mothers: Yaksini Sadhana in Tantric Buddhism/Miranda Shaw. 12. The power of creation: Sakti, women, and the Goddess/Cynthia Ann Humes. Select bibliography. Index.
"Breaking Boundaries with the Goddess draws together twelve Sakta interpreters from North America, Europe, and India to discuss the present state and future challenges of studies of the South Asian Goddess. They focus on Sanskrit, Tamil, Bengali, and tribal languages, and they cover geographic areas from the north to the south of the subcontinent and beyond, including Tibet, and even parts of Central Asia that were once under Kusana rule. Their sources are wide-ranging: they investigate archaeological finds from the Indus Valley, sculptures recovered in robbers' hordes in Eastern India, and sites excavated by the Russians near Afghanistan. They read texts, including Vedas, Agamas, epics, Puranas, Tantras, medieval ritual digests, and glorifications; examine rituals, art and social attitudes; and their fieldwork takes them to meet tribal Khonds, Gonds, Oraons, and Nagas, Bengali Tantric practitioners, and temple priests and devotees. Numerous Goddesses find their way into the pages of this Volume": the Vedic Viraj, Laksmi, Sita, Durga Mahisamardini, Kali, Korravai, tribal Goddesses such as Tari Penu and Anna Kuari, the ten Mahavidyas, Jagaddhatri, various yaksinis, Vindhyavasini, and even Goddesses whose names cannot be deciphered with our present knowledge. All of the contributors write in honor of the late Professor Narendra Nath Bhattacharyya (1934-2001), the Bengali master interpreter of Saktism, who mentored many of them and influenced the field tremendously, with his insistence that the study of ritual or text not be divorced from a consideration of social institutions, particularly those derived from tribal culture, and his belief that the importance of women as ritual actors and purveyors of tradition not be forgotten." (jacket)
