Customer Reviews

Indian Mythology (Library of the World's Myths and Legends)

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Anyone not from India and stepping into the sea of Indian mythology will find the water gets deep pretty fast. Gods, demons, and sages have multiple personalities that appear and reappear in different traditions and histories. There is no established canon or authority. The stories themselves easily fill libraries. How does one organize this mythology after learning the names of the major gods and their consorts and the story told in the Ramayana of Rama, Sita, Hanuman etc?
I haven't found a better book to explain Indian mythology and belief. The author uses a straightforward historical approach beginning with pre-Vedic deities early in Indian history including the all-important Mother Goddess in all of her manifestations. The development of Brahmanic ideas is succinctly explained. After discussing Creation myths, the author excells in discussing the many gods and goddesses of Hinduism and their historical development. Unlike most texts that discuss a seemingly endless catalogue of gods and goddesses- and they do appear in these pages as well- the author interprets their stories and relates them by theme, source, etc. with other stories. Using a historical approach, Ions bestows on the reader the power to understand the changes and additions to Indian beliefs as part of an unfolding pattern responding to social, religious, and cultural changes. Complex and amorphous, the Western reader gets a sense that the growth of Indian mythology was organic and far from haphazard and accidental. The book is well illustrated, captioned, and indexed.