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Women in the Puranas
Women and the Puranic Tradition in India by Monika Saxena, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2019; pp xvii + 288, ₹1,495.
In this volume, Monika Saxena takes us by the hand and valiantly leads us on a guided path through the massive compendia of Hindu stories and practices that coalesced in the classical period (300 CE to 1100 CE). She does this via the Vishnu, Markandeya, Matsya, Agni and Bhagavata Puranas. Choosing five early and late Puranas from among the 18 texts designated as Maha Puranas, Saxena uses them to explore and track the developments in Hindu orthopraxy and orthodoxy in places and times shadowed by the spread of Buddhism. In this rigorously annotated volume, Saxena does well to remind us that the Puranas are far more than naïve collections of sectarian myths.
Myth and History
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