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The interest currently being expressed in women and religions has thrown down an important challenge: the need to see women not merely as the passive victims of an oppressive ideology but also, perhaps primarily, as the active agents of their own positive constructs. In this book nine contributors study the role of women in Hindu religion by examining textual studies of the part they played in a variety of religious rituals, both past and present; by exploring the socio-religious context of their various communities; and by using specialist material to draw on cross-cultural conclusions.