I picked up this book on a whim and I read it for pleasure. Yes, dear reader, you heard me correctly . . . I read this for pleasure.

The title was what first caught my eye. I've recently started delving into Jewish studies, skirting the realms of both ancient history and theology, so I thought this book would fit in nicely so far as the Aryan Myth being co-opted by Europeans to subvert and displace Jewish origins. What I failed to realize, until I started the book, was that the study approached the subject matter from a textual standpoint rather than a historical one.

Like most of us who received our higher education in the late eighties and early nineties, I had all the requisite exposure to European history, but I also had some exposure to East Indian history as well, so the whole notion of the Aryan Myth being not solely a European phenomenon was not new to me.

However, this book is squarely aimed at scholars, and is not for the general reader. Furthermore, the author is a professor of literature, so a certain degree of knowledge in that field is greatly to be desired. My background is in history, so I had some initial difficulties digesting the onslaught of "isms" that Figueira marshalled in these pages. And certainly, as any academic can attest to, most "isms" have different meanings in different fields of study, ranging from philosophy to history to literary analysis.

Still, despite it all, I really felt I got something out of the book. Part One deals with European approaches to the Aryan myth, and many may react with shock and disgust at the manner in which our fine European scholars of centuries past manufactured absent text to suit their social and political agendas.

Part Two deals with Indian approaches to the Aryan Myth, and how it was used to promote social reform and various nationalist agendas. Certainly, some knowledge of Indian history and the British Raj would come in handy.

Though some readers may need to have a Webster's Collegiate Dictionary at the ready, Figueira states her arguments quite clearly and her language is polished. There is a cohesive nature to the way she has organized her thoughts, and she manages to tie up each chapter quite neatly while transitioning into her next line of thought. Her afterword binds it all together and ends with the rather disturbing, if not pithy, observation that the Aryan legacy haunts academia though the "Brahminization of theory."

We are left to ponder this in the wake of her thesis.