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The book deals with three mythical accounts from the Mahabharata namely : (i) Garuda and the Nagas and the wager between Vinata and Kadru (ii) Kaca, Sukra and Devayani (iii) The 'Churning of the Ocean'. It presents a detailed study of these accounts and proposes that they have deeper ethnosocial implications. The conflict between the Nagas and Garuda, together with the wager between Vinata and Kadru, form a tale of two phratries of the bigger Naga clan, and their ...
The book deals with variety of concepts, images and beliefs in the Vedic tradition, revealed through Vedic hymns and rituals. Several images and symbols, at times, are influenced by folk-beliefs at that period, some of which are current even to-day. The complex image of Aksara not only having a rain-symbolism but also getting a dimension of proto-philosophy, that of the Son-husband current even today, that of the crying worlds not restricted only to the Vedic ...
The book is meant to mark the state of ritual as found in the Samhita and Brahmana texts. This is much before the Srautasutras, which in later times codified every matter of the then developed elaborate ritual. The glimpses from the Rgveda do not correspond to the details of the ritual found in these later texts. With the Brahmanas, the so-called Srauta type of Vedic ritual was almost fixed, though the Srautasutras at some places show changes-omissions or ...