Jessica V Birkenholtz coauthors a book on Nepal’s Swasthani Vrata Katha in English translation

Jessica V  Birkenholtz’s coauthored English translation of the Swasthani Vrata Katha is now available (for free!) through Oxford Academic Open Access. It will be available in print in February 2026. Here is the book abstract:

The Swasthani Vrata Katha is the most widely read, recited, and listened to Hindu devotional text, especially of local indigenous origin, among Hindu laity in Nepal. Dedicated to and itself the physical embodiment of a local goddess named Swasthani, Nepali Hindus recite the Swasthani every year from cover to cover over the winter month of Magh (January–February). It is a collection of widely circulating Hindu myths about gods, demons, and divine dalliances that forefront Shiva, Sati, and Parvati but it is also a local folk story about women’s real, everyday hardships and the rewards of attending to one’s dharma and devotion to the goddess Swasthani. In Nepal, the Swasthani parallels the entrenched social, cultural, and religious importance of the Ramayana and Mahabharata elsewhere in the Hindu world and similarly provides a pervasive local vocabulary through the familiar trials and triumphs of Goma as a girl child, young wife, mother, and widow and those of her daughter-in-law Chandravati and their son/husband Navaraj. This is the first full-length English translation of the Swasthani from the original Nepali. Just like Parvati made Swasthani and her story known beyond the realm of the gods to the human realm, so, too, this translation makes them known beyond Nepal to a broad English-speaking audience.