The Ring of Truth

From Shakuntala to Scheherazade to Marilyn Monroe, from Ancient India and Greece to Medieval Europe to modern cinema, sexual desire and jewelry, particularly rings, have been very often connected. Why do jewels keep appearing in stories about marriage and adultery, love and betrayal, loss and recovery, identity and masquerade? What is the mythology that makes finger rings symbols of true (or, as the case may be, untrue) love across the world? Wendy Doniger’s new book offers a riveting cross-cultural history of jewelry and its role in seduction, romance and infidelity. Few writers could begin with personal family anecdotes, shift to Sanskrit and Greek epics and the plays of Kalidasa and Shakespeare, make detours into fairy tales and folklore, return to Hollywood films and modern pop songs and still maintain a coherent, illuminating and supremely entertaining discussion. Yet that is precisely what Wendy Doniger accomplishes in this lively and penetrating examination of the enduring power of myth as revealed through stories about jewels, sex and clever women. The Ring of Truth, like all of Wendy Doniger’s books, is an astonishing and hugely satisfying work of scholarship rendered in compulsively readable prose. Praise for The Hindus: An Alternative History ‘[A] staggeringly comprehensive book.’ —Pankaj Mishra, New York Times ‘Doniger’s is an amazingly breathtaking book in its sweep. Indeed, before this, one would have thought such a book could never be written…She writes with sympathy and empathy and with humour and wit…[The Hindus] is a great book.’ —Bibek Debroy, The Indian Express ‘[This] is no ordinary trek through inscriptions and chronicles. It is more like a psychedelic pilgrimage to sites, ritual moments, and beloved texts scattered over three millennia.’ —David Shulman, The New York Review of Books ‘[A] masterpiece…There is no book like Doniger’s which so meticulously and faithfully interprets the Hindu spirit.’ —A.K. Bhattacharya, Business Standard Praise for The Mare’s Trap: Nature and Culture in the Kamasutra ‘Doniger’s strength as a scholar lies in her knowledge and understanding of Hindu texts, and that strength is on glorious display here.’ —Arshia Sattar, Open ‘One of the definitive guides to making sense of the ancient encyclopaedia of sexual behaviour.’ —Sarthak Ray, Financial Express ‘To explore [the Kamasutra] you need a suitable guide, and none could be better than Wendy Doniger, who alone among the great living Indologists is also an authority on Hollywood B movies, as well as on the dizzying welter of stories that can intertwine in and around a bed.’ —Roberto Calasso, New York Times