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.

My family jewels and other tall tales -- Introduction: The signifying ring -- Marriage rings (and adultery rings) -- The ring fished from the ocean -- Shakuntala and the ring of memory -- Rings of forgetfulness in medieval European romances -- Siegfried's ring and Wagner's ring -- Pregnant riddles and clever wives -- The rape of the clever wife -- The affair of the diamond necklace -- The slut assumption in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- Are diamonds a woman's best friend? -- Two conclusions, on money and myth.