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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, 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? In this dazzling work of scholarship and insight, Wendy Doniger answers these questions and more, as she shifts between Sanskrit and Greek epics, the plays of Kalidasa and Shakespeare, fairy tales and folklore, Hollywood films and pop songs. The Ring of Truth is an illuminating and supremely entertaining examination of the enduring power of myth through stories - told across the world and over centuries-about jewels, romance and sex.||About the Author||Wendy Doniger, author of classic works like The Hindus, An Alternative History and Hindu Myths, holds two doctorates, in Sanskrit and Indian studies, from the universities of Harvard and Oxford. She has taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and the University of California, Berkeley, and was the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. Her other books include Siva. The Erotic Ascetic, Dreams, Illusion and Other realities, Reading the Kamasutra. The Mare's Trap and Other Essays on Vatsyayana's Kamasutra, On Hinduism, and translations of the Rig Veda and the Kamasutra.