Jainism and society

A review of John E. Cort: Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001

The Codes of Conduct of the Terāpanth Samaṇ Order

The article investigates the relationship between canonical rules (dharma) and customary rules (maryādā) in contemporary Jain mendicant life. It focuses on an analysis of the Terāpanth Śvetāmbara Jain mendicant order and presents translations and analyses of the rules and regulations and initiation rituals for a new category of Jain novices, the samaṇ order, which was introduced by the Terāpanth in 1981. It is argued that variations and cumulative changes in post-canonical monastic law can be understood in terms of rule specification and secondary canonization and not only in terms of exceptions to the rule. The article contributes both to the anthropology of South Asian asceticism and monasticism and to the exploration of the maryādā and āvaśyaka literatures of the Jains

Jaina Relic Stūpas

It is a common stereotype of textbooks on world religions that Jains never worshipped the remains of the Jinas, and consequently never developed a ritual culture parallel to the cult of relics in Buddhism. Apart from isolated myths and legends in canonical and medieval Jain literature, depicting the veneration of the relics of the tīrthaṅkaras by the gods, there is no indication of bone relic worship in early and medieval Jainism to date. This report gives a brief overview of recent, somewhat unexpected, findings on the thriving cult of bone relic stūpas and the ritual role of the materiality of the dead amongst contemporary Jains. Although classical Jain doctrine rejects the worship of material objects, intermittent fieldwork in India, between 1997-2004, on the hitherto unstudied current Jain mortuary rituals furnished clear evidence for the ubiquity of bone relic stūpas and relic veneration across the Jain sectarian spectrum. British Academy funded research in 2000-2001 produced the first documentation of two modern Jain bone relic stūpas, a samādhi and a smāraka, constructed by the Terāpanth Śvetāmbara Jains. Subsequent fieldwork fundet by the Central Research Fund of the University of London demonstrated that relic stūpas are not only a feature of the aniconic Jain traditions, but also of Mūrtipūjaka and Digambara traditions. Hence a general distinction of rites commemoration and rites of empowerment in the Jaina tradition is suggested. The article reviews the potential significance of these findings for the history of religions

Terapanth Svetambara Jain Tradition

Encyclopedia Entry. Brief summary of the history, doctrines and organisation of the Terapanth Svetambara tradition

Demographic Trends in Jaina Monasticism

The study of Jainism as a lived religion is still hampered by a lack of reliable sociological and demographic information both on the Jain laity and Jain mendicants. Most empirical studies to date have been thematically oriented or were of an exploratory nature, based on the methods advanced by the classical anthropological village studies or on small surveys of a non-representative nature. In both cases, the units of investigation were defined in terms of observer categories which were often created ad hoc in the field due to the advantages of snowball sampling under conditions of limited resources. Despite the pioneering studies of Vilas Sangave (1959/1980) on the social divisions of the Jain lay community and of Muni Uttam Kamal Jain (1975) on the pre-modern history of the religious divisions of the Jain mendicants, most students of Jainism, and indeed most Jains, have still no way of knowing how many independent mendicant orders exist today and how they are organised. The aim of this article is to fill this gap and to provide a brief overview of the present schools, orders and sects within both the Śvetāmbara- and the Digambara-denomination by bringing together the available demographic data on the current Jain monastic traditions with a synopsis of their schismogenesis and an analysis of the principal dimensions of social organisation. It is argued that the reinvention of the tradition of the naked Digambara munis in the early twentieth century and the increasing level of education of Jain women together with organisational reforms of the Śvetāmbara orders are amongst several decisive causal factors informing the current exponential increase of the number of Jain mendicants. The most interesting result of this study is the emerging, nearly complete, pattern of the group structure of the current Jain mendicant traditions, including the Digambara traditions whose modern history is described for the first time. A comprehensive analysis of the Jain lay movements is beyond the scope of this article

Review of Jainism - A Pictorial Guide to the Religion of Non-Violence by Kurt Titze (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998)

A review of Kurt Titze's Pictorial Guide to Jain pilgrimage sites with contributions of Klaus Bruhn, Jyoti Prasad Jain, Noel King, and Vilas A. Sangave

Stūpa as Tīrtha: Jaina Monastic Funerary Monuments

One of the principal findings of recent research at SOAS on Jaina rituals of death is that in addition to temples relic stūpas serve as alternative destinations for pilgrimage across almost the entire Jaina sectarian spectrum. The report points out some of the characteristics of these pilgrimages and offers two maps of the geographical distribution of Jaina stūpas in India

Jaina Philosophy and Religion

Review article of the work Essays in Jaina Philosophy and Religion, edited by Piotr Balcerowicz of the University of Warsaw, published in 2003 in Delhi by Motilal Banarsidas, containing articles by N. Balbir, P. Balceroxicz, J. Bronkhorst, C. Caillat, J. Cort, C. Emmrich, P. Granoff, Muni Jambuvijaya, A. Mette, J. Soni, L. Soni, K. Watanabe, A. Wezler, and K. Wiley

Burial Ad Sanctos at Jaina Sites in India

The analysis of the process of gradual integration of religious artifacts into the originally anti-iconic protestant Jaina traditions, starting with relics of renowned saints, and the evolution of pilgrimage centres from the early nineteenth century onwards shows that it followed the same logic as proposed by the theory of aniconism for the development of anthropomorphic images in ancient India: relics, stūpas, aniconic representations, anthropomorphic iconoplastic representations. It is argued in this article that it is unlikely that extant aniconic Jaina religious art from ancient India evolved along similar lines for at least four reasons: The absence of (1) doctrinal aniconism in early Jainism, (2) of a notable cult of the relics of the Jina, (3) of evidence for Jaina stūpas antedating anthropomorphic miniature reliefs, and (4) of sharply demarcated Jaina sectarian traditions before the Digambara-Śvetambara split. The reputedly oldest iconographic evidence from Mathurā rather suggests a parallel evolution of iconic and aniconic representations; with footprint/foot-images (caraṇa-pādukā) as a relatively late addition to the vocabulary of aniconic Jaina art. The apocryphal development of aniconic iconography in protestant Jaina traditions with progressive emphasis on the individual identity of renowned gurus and gurunīs of particular monastic traditions seems to replicate earlier developments in the iconic traditions which must have started in the early medieval period. The particular evolutionary sequence and selectivity of aniconic Jaina iconography with its characteristic exegetical impediments against the worship of Jina images and increasing emphasis on the practice of burial ad sanctos and cities of the dead however represents a genuine novelty not only in the history of Jainism but in Indian religious culture as a whole