Collection of previously published essays. Concerning Kamasutras :challenging narratives of history and sexuality /Jyoti Puri - The cult of the Earth Goddess among the Magar of Nepal /Marie Lecomte-Tilouine - Women in Honglou meng :prescriptions of purity in the femininity of Qing Dynasty China /Louise Edwards - Contemporary Theravغada and Zen Buddhist attitudes to human sexuality :an exercise in comparative ethics /Michel Clasquin-Johnson - Sexuality :the Chinese and the Judeo-Christian traditions in Hong Kong /Adolf K.T. Tsang - Singing the glory of asceticism :devotion of asceticism in Jainism /John E. Cort - Asceticism and sexuality in the mythology of aSiva, part II /Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty - Temple girls of medieval Karnataka /Aloka Parasher and Usha Naik - Kumari or virgin worship in Kathmandu Valley /M.R. Allen - Social consequences of marrying Viosonu Narayaona :primary marriage among the Newars of Kathmandu Valley /Anne Vergati - Abductions and the constellation of a Hindu communal bloc in Bengal of the 1920s /P.K. Dutta - Women, sexuality and enlightenment :Kankyo no tomo /Rajyashree Pandey - Re-imagining the divine in Sikhism /Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh - The power to pollute and the power to preserve :perceptions of female power in a Hindu village /Catherine Thompson - Lustful women, elusive lovers :identifying males as objects of female desire /Prem Chowdhry - Not this, not that :the Hijras of India and the cultural politics of sexuality /Vinay Lal - "Like a city ablaze" :the third sex and the creation of sexuality in Jain religious literature /Leonard Zwilling and Michael J. Sweet - A comparative analysis of Hijras and drag queens :the subversive possiblities and limits of parading effeminacy and negotiating masculinity /Sandeep Bakshi - Transsexualism, gender, and anxiety in traditional India /Robert P. Goldman - Ambiguous sexuality :imagery and interpretation in Tantric Buddhism /Roger R. Jackson