At the Feet of the Goddess: The Divine Feminine in Local Hindu Religion

This book explores local Hindu goddesses and their worship in a village settlement on Orissa and a small town in southern Tamilnade, India. The study raises and answers three questions. Is early goddess-centered literature still applicable to contemporary goddesses? Do local goddesses really warrant the negative labels "malevolent" or "ambivalent" ascribed to them by some scholars? And is there uniformity of divergence between the goddesses and their worship at the two field sites?