Abstract
My aim in this paper is to discuss a fragment of this enormous cultural artifact. The fragment in question is limited by language since the paper will be concerned only with popular Hindi cinema. I have called this cinema Bombay cinema because I believe it can be defined as a more or less homogenous cultural practice. Elsewhere I have examined its mythic antecedents, its relationship to songs, dialogue, and the star system, and with specific reference to Mother India (1957), its transformation of specific idioms associated with the idea of the collective mother in Indian culture...