This book offers a portrait of Hadimba, a primary village goddess in the Kullu Valley of the West Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. Drawing on diverse ethnographic and textual materials The Many Faces of a Himalayan Goddess is rich with myths and tales, accounts of dramatic rituals and festivals, and descriptions of everyday life in the celebrated but remote Kullu Valley. The result is an important contribution to the study of Indian villagegoddesses, lived Hinduism, Himalayan Hinduism, and the rapidly growing field of religion and ecology.

• Acknowledgments


• A Word on Transliteration


• Illustrations


• Introduction


• Chapter 1. Getting There: The Land of the Gods


• Chapter 2. Assembling the Ritual Core: Hadimba as a Complex Agent


• Chapter 3. Narrating the Local Web of Associations: The Goddess of Many Faces


• Chapter 4. Encountering Epic India: Hadimba and the Mahabharata


• Chapter 5. Negotiating National Hinduism: The Controversy over Blood Sacrifice


• Chapter 6. Confronting the Global: Hadimba and Climate Change


• Conclusion


• Notes


• References


• Index

Ehud Halperin teaches at Tel Aviv University. He earned his PhD in South Asian Religions from Columbia University in 2012. He specializes in the study of Himalayan Hinduism and the ways in which religious belief, practice, narrative, social order, and capitalist modernity intertwine in everyday life in the region, especially in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Halperin's work concerns diverse issues, such as Indian goddesses, Hindu ritual and sacrifice, material religion and agency of divinities, religion and ecology, and lived Hinduism.