Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces trenchant biases within the field of puranic studies and how they filter into scholarship on "The Greatness of the Goddess (DM)". It defines the vying ideologies entailed in nivrtti and pravrtti dharma as discussed in their locus classicus, the Mahabharata. The book reexamines Heesterman's famous rhetoric on the "conundrum of the king's authority" to discuss how the DM undercuts that conundrum. It provides a close analysis of the enframement of the DM, demonstrating its function in encoding the text's primarily pravrttic impetus. The book also reexamines the commonly held notion of the Goddess of the DM as a paradigmatic wrathful goddess of the tooth, before reflecting upon the actual Goddess people see within the DM.