Informative book, about woven ideas.

[Aditya]

Ms. Doniger has tried to discuss Hinduism, and how people might have interacted with the religion. She has been insightful. There is a much quoted verse in the Bhagwad Gita, brought to the world attention when J. Robert Oppenheimer saw the test explosion of the atom bomb. The verse starts with a great admiration, and praise of a thousand suns, and then the seer Sri. Krishna says, that 'Now I am death, the destroyer of worlds.'
The saint and monk, many who consider a God, Swami Vivekananda, once said, that if had ever said anything that was in anger, or caused destruction, the cause was himself alone, but if he had ever helped anyone, or carried forward the word of God, it was God who was the cause. It seems, Mr. Oppenheimer was quoting Sri. Krishna, where Sri. Krishna glorified a great light, perhaps his inner light, that made him say the verses of the Bhagwad Gita, and then he says that he is death, and what follows.
About the ten avatars, in Hinduism, it seems that they are attempts to bring creation to the state, before the manifestation of the first avatar, from what I gathered from Ms. Doniger's work. The first manifestation of the avatar, was the wild boar, and the manifestation did not know, why she was created, and herself had small sucklings to keep her happy. The young represent the wild boar wanting to go back to the state before her known existence, and feeling her young represented the state she first realized. This is just an idea that the work of Ms. Doniger seemed to want to represent.