They enjoyed picnics in olive groves, practised dangerous sports leaping bare-chested over the horns of bulls and revered both a mother goddess and a young priest-king.

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And the English goddess has generated a lot of excitement - women here can be heard singing Jai Angrezi Devi Maiyaa Ki (Long Live the Mother Goddess of English).

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Yet, many other women complained such thinking was demeaning and kept them on a "mother-goddess" pedestal, with their virginity as the touchstone of family honour.

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Ganges is revered as a goddess, and it is often called maiya or mother.

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'She's the complete Goddess, who has infinite love combining that of wife and mother.

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He wrote of Niobe, the mother of 14 children who boasted about how much more fertile she was than the goddess Leto.

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