Gandhi himself said that, “If I know Hinduism at all, it is essentially inclusive and ever-growing, ever-responsive. It gives the freest scope to imagination, speculation, and reason.” Here are a handful of quotations from Wendy Doniger’s astonishing book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, that say much the same thing. Religion, as always, is variety, response,…
Tag: Wendy Doniger
The Great Myths #48: Creation as a Question (Hindu)
Here is the great Nāsadīya hymn, from the Rig Veda, where the mystery of creation is illustrated by a collection of unanswerable questions: There was neither non-existence nor existence then; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottomlessly deep? There…
The Great Myths #44: Sacred Language & Two Hymns to Speech (Hindu)
Rig Veda 10:71: The Origins of Sacred Speech Bṛhaspati! When they set in motion the first beginning of speech, giving names, their most pure and perfectly guarded secret was revealed through love. When the wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve, then friends recognized their…
The Great Myths #31: The Child Krishna & the Universe in His Mouth (Hindu)
One day when Rāma and the other little sons of the cowherds were playing, they reported to his mother, “Kṛṣṇa has eaten dirt.” Yaśodā took Krishna by the hand and scolded him, for his own good, and she said to him, seeing that his eyes were bewildered with fear, “Naughty boy, why have you secretly…
Rig Veda
In another life (appropriately enough), I would have been Hindu; in an additional other life, at the very least I would have started studying Indo-European at a young age. As it happened, whatever brief time I’ve been able to devote to Hinduism has no doubt been saturated with the romanticism of a novice who is…