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Showing posts from August 11, 2008


Book on the Dog in Hindu Mythology and Sacred Texts

A new book titled ‘Sarama and Her Children: The Dog in Indian Myth’ by Bibek Debroy traces the role of dogs in Hindu scriptures like the Vedas, Epics, Puranas, Dharma Shastras and Niti Shastras. The most famous dog in the Hindu religion myths is the dog in the Mahabharata that accompanied the Pandavas. Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, declined to enter heaven without the dog as he was not willing to ignore the loyalty of the dog that followed him till his death. There are also numerous other references to dogs in the classical texts. But still several Hindus consider dogs as inauspicious. The widespread assumption is that dogs have always been looked down upon in Hinduism and a legacy of that attitude persists even now. Tracing the Indian attitude towards dogs in a chronological fashion, beginning with the pre-Vedic Indus Valley civilization, Bibek Debroy in ‘Sarama and Her Children: The Dog in Indian Myth’ discovers that the truth is more complicated. Dog is mention