Chapter 1: Goddesses That Dwell On Earth: A Folk Paradigm of Divine
Female Multiplicity
Brenda Beck
Chapter 2: Constructing Goddess Worship: Colonial Ethnographic and
Public Health Discourses in South India
Perundevi Srinivasan
Chapter 3: From Local Goddess to Locale Goddess: Karumariamman as
Divine Mother at a North American Hindu Temple
Tracy Pintchman
Chapter 4: An Indentured Goddess: Displacement of a Village Deity
from Colonial India to Ceylon
Sasi Kumar Balasundaram
Chapter 5: Creating Realities, Communicating Dreams, Constructing
Temple Lore: Anklets for the Goddess’ feet at Thirumeeyachur
Vasudha Narayanan
Chapter 6: Traveling Goddess– A Study of Uppalamma in Andhra
Pradesh
Sree Padma
Chapter 7: The Leap of the Limping Goddess: Aai Khodiyar of
Gujarat
Neelima Shukla-Bhatt
Chapter 8: Tantric Visions, Local Manifestations: The Cult Centre
of Chinnamasta at Rajrappa, Jharkhand
R. Mahalakshmi
Chapter 9: The Goddess on the Hill: The (Re)invention of a local
goddess as Cāmuṇḍī
Caleb Simmons
Chapter 10: Communicating the Local Discursively: Devi, the Divine
feminine as a Contemporary Symbol for Grassroots Feminist
Politics
Priya Kapoor
Sree Padma is executive director of the Inter-Collegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) Program and research assistant professor in Asian studies at Bowdoin College.
In this edited volume, Sree Padma brilliantly introduces the
comparative study of contemporary local goddesses as a crucial
window on India today that has previously been underrepresented in
scholarship. Worship of the goddess in many forms in India is one
of the world’s oldest continuous traditions, and Inventing and
Reinventing the Goddess shows how and why, by providing lucid
discussion of the many ways in which communities have invested and
reinvested local goddesses with a diversity of contemporary
concerns. Each chapter’s detailed case study breaks new theoretical
ground in our understanding of the vital synergy that emerges
wherever and whenever people connect local and global in the figure
of the goddess.
*Karen Pechilis, Drew University*
I am struck by how well this book brings out the vitality of South
Asian goddess traditions, particularly in their mobility and the
responses they elicit in new situations. These authors have looked
for divinity in surprising places, and enriched the possibilities
for deepening what we think we know.
*Alfred Hiltebeitel, George Washington University*
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