Goddesses of Kathmandu Valley – Arun Gupto

Goddesses are found everywhere, but they are most at home in South Asia, which is the focus of Professor Gupto’s study. He has combined scholarship, theoretical astuteness and critical acumen to provide a fresh treatment of a subject of abiding interest to students of culture and the arts! Kaiser Haq, Department of English, Dhaka University, Bangladesh
In South Asia goddesses are conceptualized and worshipped in a fascinating range of forms – from cosmic beings to bacterial manifestations, from human- like appearances to creatures with animal and insect semblances. This book maps the diverse identities of goddesses through metaphors of Grace, Rage and Knowledge, and offers an in-depth insight into femininity, sexual politics, ritual worships, religion, ecology and gender. Grace manifests as motherly sublimity, warring protectors and varying personifications of sexuality. Rage encapsulates the fearful aspects of goddesses and independent identities of women. Knowledge evokes associations with order, reason and intellect in conflating gendered binaries of body/mind and nature/culture. The volume explores how these deity attributes are expressed and embedded through anthropomorphic as well as inorganic forms of nature: beautiful women, multi-legged and many- armed animals, epistemic selves, demonic beings, glamorous personifications and also grotesque sub-humans.
A methodological combination of critical theory, mythological and philosophical concepts, along with popular ethnographic narratives and lived experiences, this monograph will greatly interest scholars and researchers of religious studies, cultural studies, folklore, art, literature, sociology and gender studies, especially those interested in Nepal and Hinduism.
Arun Gupto is Principal at the Institute of Advanced Communication, Education and Research, Kathmandu, Nepal. He has been part of the faculty at the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University. His areas of study are literary theory, postcolonial studies and South Asian studies, and his current research is on South Asian art and religion, culminating in a documentary project entitled The Art of the Lake!
Goddesses of Kathmandu Valley – Arun Gupto