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Title: Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit (Penguin Classics)
ISBN: 0140449906
Author:
Anonymous
Publicate Date: 2004-09-28
Publish: 2004-09-28
List Price: $16.00
Average Customer Rating: 2.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $8.91
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $6.40
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.88
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| Customer Review: |
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1: biased garbage
If you would like to read about how to denigrate hinduism, wendy doniger is your woman. She has in all her books insulted hinduism. Her lack of intellectual background or cultural understanding and pure racial bias are very obvious in her writings.
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2: Trash
Silly book by a sex-obsessed author - Freudian analysis to explore religion? At best, one can describe it as the product of an over-imaginative mind, but it's certainly not a book on Hindu religion, because it interprets the religion in ways that the practitioners never intended or even imagined. "Your interpretation of my beliefs reflects the way you think, not the way I think."
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3: Rather than expose the scriptures Ms Doniger exposes her self which is least bit beautiful.
I have just been reading Hindu Myths by Wendy Doniger. I was quite disappointed in reading the translations and analysis in the book. It seems quite obvious to me that Ms. Doniger does not have any love for the hindu scriptures that she's translating, though she professes in the preface that the selection of stories in the book are her favorites. Everything from the choice of the titles to the naming of the characters to the descriptions of the conversations to the conclusions that she draws from the myths seem to be designed to expose hidden sexual/erotic meanings and reduce the tales and myths to rubbish produced by peurile and perverted imbeciles. The book's main contents page cleverly hides the outrageous themes that she has chosen as subheadings in the main text. It is not clear why exactly this was done, probably to increase the sales. At least unsuspecting readers like me would not be discouraged when we look at it before we buy the book. Her narrative rarely evokes the feeling that is intended in the text that she is translating. She has a single minded purpose of nailing the hidden unholy, scandalous message that the tale carries in her opinion. This book is definitely not intended to present any positive view to the readers. It is more like a brief of an investigation specifically designed to malign hindu faith.
Ms. Doniger has spent the better part of her life reading the hindu scriptures and it is sad to see what she has learnt from them and what she has chosen to share with her countrymen.
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4: A poorly written/opinionated book written by an opinionated individual
this book may portray some of the facts of hinduism, but it does not seem to want to portray it in an inoffensive manner. what the author doesn't or does understand is that this is a religion, it would be like writing a book on christianity and refering to the noah and adam and eve stories as myths. then researching it half-assed and writing on personal opinions that are highly offensive to christians. matters of faith should not be tried in court, so there is no way you can look at it in a factual or intellectual manner. it just does not make sense, unless you want to visit the places where these Gods were born and look at the evidence and speak of it or read the palm leaf that still exists in India that predicted the birth of jesus...which was predicted in the Hindu religion.
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5: Grossly inaccurate and condescending
For those who want to truly learn about hinduism, I would recommend the Bhagavad Gita translations. Versions by Ram Dass, Eknath Easwaran, Parmahansa Yogananda are quite good though there is no replacement for the original text in Sanskrit.
Also, I would recommend David Frawley's
Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization.I will not even dwell into the details of the book that I found inaccurate . You can figure the author's viewpoint just by noticing that the title uses the term 'myth'. When you discuss some, if not all, religious sacred scriptures and label them as 'myths' you clearly show yourself as a non-believer and one who typically adopts a condescending attitude. I felt the need to write this review since the top rated review calls Hindus who dont accept this book 'idiots'.
And in the future, it would be nice to see reviewers who do not resort to tactics of grade one students- name calling. Maturity is highly appreciated . Thanks
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