A scholar of Sanskrit and Indian textual traditions, her major works include The Hindus: An Alternative History; Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva; Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; and The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit.

She received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in June 1968, with a dissertation on Asceticism and Sexuality in the Mythology of Siva, supervised by Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Sr. She obtained a D. Phil.

in Oriental Studies from Oxford University, in February 1973, with a dissertation on The Origins of Heresy in Hindu Mythology, supervised by Robert Charles Zaehner.

I am neither an archaeologist nor an art historian; I am a Sanskritist, indeed a recovering Orientalist, of a generation that framed its study of Sanskrit with Latin and Greek rather than Urdu or Tamil.

I've labored all my adult life in the paddy fields of Sanskrit, ...[11]Her books both in Hinduism and other fields have been positively reviewed by the Indian scholar Vijaya Nagarajan[12] and the American Hindu scholar Lindsey B. Harlan, who noted as part of a positive review that "Doniger's agenda is her desire to rescue the comparative project from the jaws of certain proponents of postmodernism".

"[15] Richard Gombrich called it "learned and exciting";[14] however, John H. Marr was disappointed that the "regionalism" so characteristic of the texts is absent in Doniger's book, and wondered why the discussion took so long.

"[18] Beginning in the early 2000s, some conservative diaspora Hindus started to question whether Doniger accurately described Hindu traditions.

[21] Christian Lee Novetzke, associate professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Washington, summarizes this controversy as follows: Wendy Doniger, a premier scholar of Indian religious thought and history expressed through Sanskritic sources, has faced regular criticism from those who consider her work to be disrespectful of Hinduism in general.

[22]Novetzke cites Doniger's use of "psychoanalytical theory" as ... a kind of lightning rod for the censure that these scholars receive from freelance critics and 'watch-dog' organizations that claim to represent the sentiments of Hindus.

[22]Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, concurring with Novetzke, adds that while the agenda of those in the American Hindu community who criticize Doniger appears similar to that of the Hindu right-wing in India, it is not quite the same since it has "no overt connection to national identity", and that it has created feelings of guilt among American scholars, given the prevailing ethos of ethnic respect, that they might have offended people from another culture.

[38][39][40] Indian authors such as Arundhati Roy, Partha Chatterjee, Jeet Thayil, and Namwar Singh inveighed against the publisher's decision.