Learning about the Other

The impulse to tell a good story is universal and eternal.

- ARUNDHUTI DASGUPTA

Nomadic hordes, early settlers, kings, and commoners—everyone has always loved a good yarn. Myths and folktales that survive to this day were the elixir the ancient world sipped. These stories that the ancients once told still burn bright, holding large crowds in thrall, churning up new ideas, and driving new discoveries about early human existence.

How does one explain their timeless power?

Several writers have written eloquently on the subject (A K Ramanujan, Mircea Eliade, Karen Armstrong, Joseph Campbell, and, of course, the author of this book, Wendy Doniger) and their work has illuminated much of our modern-day understanding of these stories as a priceless, collective inheritance. The Cave of Echoes: Stories about Gods, Animals and Other Strangers swims in the same ocean of stories but uses a different pair of fins. It focuses not on the stories per se, but on the stories around these stories and asks readers to rethink established ideas about diversity, culture, and the 'other'.

The book operates much like a magic mirror where the glass reflects, not the object, but the viewer's gaze on the object. Like much of Doniger's earlier work, it draws parallels between cultures and tracks the nuances that separate one myth from another, but the aim is to demonstrate how all myths help understand the world better.

For instance, there is a delightful story that the book recounts about the