Dr. Wendy Doniger has a penchant for catching the reader’s eye by titling her books intriguingly, e.g., The Bedtrick, The Woman Who Pretended to be Who She Was, etc. Her latest offering is no exception, with a provocative cover: a lovely Pattachitra showing the many-eyed Indra embracing Ahalya.
The book is much more than what the title suggests. It is quite a daring project revealing that the two largest tomes of the Mahabharata (the Books of Peace and of Discipline) are not merely dreary didactic perorations but contain nuggets of unusual tales embedded within. She retells tales from the Book of Horse Sacrifice too. There are bad and good women, animal fables, fathers and sons, how Evil (rather Death) entered the world, kings including Indra and her favourite god, Shiva whom she has called, ‘The god of cool things’ (India Today, April 23, 2013). Many of the tales contain peculiar reversals or twists that make us pause and muse.