The Goddess Slaying the Monster Buffalo (Māmallapuram)

I have just finished reading Heinrich Zimmer’s Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (Washington DC: Bollingen Foundation, 1946), edited by Joseph Campbell and with contributions from Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. It was fairly heavy going for most of its length. Curiously, the most interesting chapters were the first (The Parable of the Ants) and the last (a Hassidic tale). Even if the rest of the book proves way too erudite for you, and if you just aren’t geared up to read Sanskrit, I suggest you check out these two chapters.

Hinduism with its armies of gods, demons, demigods, semigods, and hemigods has always fascinated me, though I always found myself slogging through too much detail. Tales from the Indian scriptures always fascinated me, but I could rarely remember what I read a mere few hours later.

Nonetheless, I will try to read more of this material, including, perhaps, an abridged edition of India’s great epic, The Mahābhārata, which consists of some 200,000 couplets. Wish me luck!