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Review
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identified Deveśvara with Surešvara. This is an instance of how sometimes commentators mislead scholars. The editor has tried to trace the citations to their original sources. Yet some citations have remained untraced. The well known verse 'manipradipa-prabhayoh..' (p. 34) is from Dharmakirti's Pramāņavārtika (2.57). The work is recommended for the interested students of Indian Epistemology and Logic as it deals with pramāṇalaksaņa, pratyaksa, anumāna, sabda, upamāna and abhāva.
-- Nagin J. Shah
Minor Vedic Deities by J. R. Joshi, University of Poona, Pune, 1978. pp. viii+220.
The work under review presents an illuminating exposition and interpretation of minor Vedic deities. The author enunciates various grounds on which the classifications of Vedic deities into major and minor may be justified. While concluding this topic in his Introduction the author maintains that it is not the number of hymns but the importance from the religiohistorical considerations that make the deity major. In support of this, the author demonstrates the culture-historical importance of Puşan and Yama and considers them to be major on this ground. Major deities have clearcut sharp individuality while the minor ones do not have. Hence the author maintains that RV. does not furnish sufficient data to enable us to characterise minor deities sharply, and that their individuality becomes more and more vivid as we go on tracing the development of their personality and character in the light of post Rgvedic literature. This point is elucidated by referring to the mythology relating to Skanda, Laxmi, Ķbhus. It is rightly pointed out that the term “minor applied to a Vedic deity does not imply that that deity is unimportant. On the contrary, many minor deities are quite important from various standpoints. They often furnish details which illumine the characters of the major deities. One may even claim that the study of a major deity would remain incomplete if the various deities connected with it were left unnoticed. Further the minor deities are often seen to be shedding much useful light on the mutual relationship between the major ones.
Dr. Joshi thinks that the minor Vedic deities have not received adequate consideration in the earlier works. Hence he claims that the pictures of the minor Vedic deities presented here are fuller and more distinct than heretofore.
There are various approaches to the interpretation of Vedic mythology, All these approaches are discussed and their limitations are indicated. Dr.
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