Publication

Abstract : CERTAIN scholarly habits, once ingrained, are difficult to change, especially when they have yielded some plausible interpretative models, which have been used consistently and are rarely subjected to further critical analysis. The search for “origins” is one such habit that can be clearly seen within the domain of studies on religion and its history in India. In order to contextualise religious traditions in their sociopolitical, cultural and material milieu, scholars often get fixated on some well-trodden origin theory so that those traditions can be appropriated to justify their ideology. Although Anamika Roy’s Sixty-four Yoginis is a meticulously researched book, its effect is somewhat mitigated by a similar display of scholarly repetition or redundancy. One of the main themes of this book, which recur in several chapters, is the positing of cultic and tribal origins of Yoginis.