Iconic Female: Goddesses of India, Nepal and Tibet

Description

The energy of the goddess fills every facet of Indian life. To her devotees, the goddess appears in myriad forms: mother, boon-giver, destroyer of evil, divine lover, protector and/or bloodthirsty ogress. The more that is discovered about her, the more teasingly complex and multivalent the Devi appears. She is both constant and changing, loved and feared, worshipped and forgotten, only to be re-discovered and worshiped again. In this book, for the first time, ten Australian researchers, working on many aspects of the Devi, have come together and offered, in a single collection, new research on the divine female. This book begins a renewed quest for the iconic Devi who continues to emerge in her many, unpredictably powerful forms.

Jayant Bapat holds doctorates in Organic Chemistry and Indology and is an adjunct research fellow at the Monash Asia Institute at Monash University. His research interests include Hinduism, Goddess cults, the Fisher community of Mumbai, and Jainism, and he has published widely in these areas. He is co-editor of The Iconic Female: Goddesses of India, Nepal and Tibet with Ian Mabbett, and The Indian Diaspora: Hindus and Sikhs in Australia. For his work in education and for the Indian community, Jayant was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 2011. Ian Mabbett has taught Asian history at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, since 1965, where he remains an adjunct research fellow. He has also taught and carried out research at Princeton and at universities in Singapore and Nagoya. His main interests are in ancient Indian history, Buddhist history and philosophy, and the comparative study of Asian religions. Ian is the co-author of The Sociology of Early Buddhism with Greg Bailey (2003) and editor of Pracyaprajnapradipa: Professor Dr. Samaresh Bandyopadhyay Felicitation Volume on Early Indian History and Culture (2012).