Wendy Doniger
Contributor
BIOGRAPHY
Wendy Doniger is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Her research and teaching interests revolve around two basic areas, Hinduism and mythology. She was a member of Encyclopaedia Britannica's Editorial Board of Advisors.
Her books include Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit; The Hindus: An Alternative History; On Hinduism; and many others.
Primary Contributions (13)
Suttee, the Indian custom of a wife immolating herself either on the funeral pyre of her dead husband or in some other fashion soon after his death. Although never widely practiced, suttee was the ideal of womanly devotion held by certain Brahman and royal castes. It is sometimes linked to the myth…
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Publications (3)
The Hindus: An Alternative History
From one of the world's foremost scholars on Hinduism, a vivid reinterpretation of its historyAn engrossing and definitive narrative account of history and myth that offers a new way of understanding one of the world's oldest major religions, The Hindus elucidates the relationship between recorded history and imaginary worlds.Hinduism does not lend itself easily to a strictly chronological account: many of its central texts cannot be reliably dated even within a century;...
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The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was: Myths of Self-Imitation
many Cultures Have Myths About Self-imitation, Stories About People Who Pretend To Be Someone Else Pretending To Be Them, In Effect Masquerading As Themselves. This Great Theme, In Literature And In Life, Tells Us That People Put On Masks To Discover Who They Really Are Under The Masks They Usually Wear, So That The Mask Reveals Rather Than Conceals The Self Beneath The Self. In This Book, Noted Scholar Of Hinduism And Mythology Wendy Doniger Offers A Cross-cultural Exploration Of The Theme...
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