Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess

Sree Padma is executive director of the Inter-Collegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) Program and research assistant professor in Asian studies at Bowdoin College.

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