Title: Open Boundaries : Jain Communities and Culture in Indian History SUNY Series in Hindu Studies Author: Cort, John
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
cover title: Open Boundaries : Jain Communities and Culture in Indian History SUNY Series in Hindu Studies author: Cort, John. publisher: State University of New York Press isbn10 | asin: 0791437868 print isbn13: 9780791437865 ebook isbn13: 9780585069708 language: English subject Jainism--History, India--Civilization--Jaina influences. publication date: 1998 lcc: BL1320.O54 1998eb ddc: 294.4 subject: Jainism--History, India--Civilization--Jaina influences. cover Page i Open Boundaries page_i Page ii SUNY Series in Hindu Studies Wendy Doniger, editor page_ii Page iii Open Boundaries Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian History file:///C|/019/files/__joined.html[27.03.2011 21:31:13] cover Edited By John E. Cort STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS page_iii Page iv Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1998 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address the State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, NY 12246 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Open boundaries : Jain communities and culture in Indian history / edited by John E. Cort. p. cm. (SUNY series in Hindu studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-3785-X (hc : alk. paper). ISBN 0-7914-3786-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. JainismHistory. 2. IndiaCivilizationJaina influences. I. Cort, John. II. Series. BLI320.054 1998 294.4dc2 97-46027 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I page_iv Page v Contents Acknowledgments vii 1. Introduction: Contested Jain Identities of Self and Other John E. Cort 1 2. Haribhadra's Analysis of Patanjala and Kula Yoga in the Yogadrstisamuccaya Christopher Key Chapple 15 3. Becoming Gautama: Mantra and History in Svetambara Jainism file:///C|/019/files/__joined.html[27.03.2011 21:31:13] cover Paul Dundas 31 4. Hemacandra and Sanskrit Poetics Gary A. Tubb 53 5. Erotic Excess and Sexual Danger in the Civakacintamani James Ryan 67 6. Who is a King? Jain Narratives of Kingship in Medieval Western India John E. Cort 85 7. Sweetmeats Or Corpses? Community, Conversion, and Sacred Places Michael W. Meister 111 8. Ritual Culture and the Distinctiveness of Jainism Lawrence A. Babb 139 9. Sramanas against the Tamil Way: Jains As Others in Tamil Saiva Literature Indira Viswanathan Peterson 163 10. Jain and Hindu "Religious Women" in Early Medieval Tamilnadu Leslie C. Orr 187 page_v Page vi 11. The Story of the Disappearing Jains: Retelling the Saiva-Jain Encounter in Medieval South India Richard H. Davis 213 References 225 Contributors 257 Index 259 page_vi Page vii Acknowledgments This volume represents the result of a lengthy collaborative process. The initial seeds of the volume were planted in a 1987 dinner conversation concerning a possible conference panel among Ralph Strohl, Vasudha Narayanan, and myself. This conversation was widened for the purposes of the panel, which was held several years later at the 1991 University of Wisconsin-Madison Conference on South Asia and included papers by Ralph Strohl, James Ryan, Richard H. Davis, and myself, with Charles Hallisey and Indira V. Peterson as respondents. Richard H. Davis and I cowrote the position paper for that panel, which is quoted in the introductory chapter. The conversation was further widened at the next stage, a four- day workshop held in summer 1993 at Amherst College. In addition to the ten chapters (2-11) published here, papers were also presented at Amherst by Olle Qvarnström, Holly Seeling, Ralph Strohl, Peter Flügel, and Ellison Findly. Phyllis Granoff and Padmanabh Jaini had planned to present papers, but were unable to attend. Other participants at the workshop were John Carman, Charles Hallisey, Janet Gyatso, Jack Hawley, Dennis Hudson, Whitney Kelting, and Anne Monius. Subsequent to Amherst the ambit of the conversation was narrowed to result in the present book, although the quality of those contributions not included here is indicated by the publication elsewhere of the papers by Ellison Findly, Peter Flügel, Phyllis Granoff, and Olle Qvarnström* file:///C|/019/files/__joined.html[27.03.2011 21:31:13] cover In addition to all of the authors and other respondents who have helped create this book, I would like to thank the following: the anonymous reviewers for the State University of New York Press for their comments; Wendy Doniger for her determined commitment to include this book in the Hindu Studies series she edits for SUNY Press; David Ford and Zina Lawrence of SUNY Press for their editorial oversight of the production of the book; Jennifer Cross for preparing the index; Janet Gyatso for providing funds for the Amherst workshop from the Hamilton Fund administered by the Amherst College Religion Department; and Charles Morris for two small grants from the Denison University Research Foundation Contingency Fund to support the Amherst workshop and other production costs. JOHN E. CORT DENISON UNIVERSITY page_vii Page viii Notes *The following essays from the 1993 workshop at Amherst College had been published elsewhere: Granoff, Phyllis. forthcoming. "Patrons, Overlords, and Artisans: Some Comments on Intricacies of Religious Donations in Medieval Jainism." In Sir William Jones Bicentenary of Death Commemoration Volume. Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate Institute, edited by V. N. Misra. Findly, Ellison. 1997. "Jaina Ideology and Early Mughal Trade with Europeans." International Journal of Hindu Studies 1:288-313. Flügel, Peter. 1997. "Power and Insight in Jain Discourse." In Doctrines and Dialogues: Syncretic Torrents in the Religions of South Asia, edited by A. Henn and H. van Skyhawk. Heidelberg: Southern Asian Institute. Qvarnström, Olle. 1998. "Stability and Adaptability: A Jain Strategy for Survival and Growth." Indo-lranian Journal. page_viii Page 1 Chapter One Introduction Contested Jain Identities of Self and Other John E. Cort how is it possible to imagine that you can continue to answer to your name whatever name that is in a serious way or that you can maintain a continuous consciousness and have a sense of its boundaries unless its tested against something that opposes and isnt it (antin 1993, 94) In an important sense, we are dealing with the formation of cultural identities understood not as essentializations (although part of their enduring appeal is that they seem and are considered to be like essentializations) but as contrapuntal ensembles, for it is the case that no identity can ever exist by itself and without an array of opposites, negatives, oppositions: Greeks always require barbarians, and Europeans Africans, Orientals, etc. (Said 1993, 52) I Quotations such as these two could be multiplied, all to the same intent: a sense of self-identity, whether in terms of the individual person or a social group, is never constructed in isolation, but rather is always a contextualized page_1 file:///C|/019/files/__joined.html[27.03.2011 21:31:13] cover Page 2 process, in which the sense of ''self" is in dialogue, opposition, or dialectical relationship to a sense of what is "not-self" or "other." 1 This insight underlies Open Boundaries. Constructing a book on the Jains around the premise that the Jains have always been active participants in larger contexts, and that therefore any adequate understanding of the Jains and Jainism must take into account both the larger contexts and the forms of Jain participation in those contexts, would hardly seem to represent a radical move. Yet, in the history of Jain studies over the past century-and-a-half, it does to a significant extent represent a new departure. The authors of the chapters in this book were invited to contribute studies that investigated Jain authors, texts, narratives, rituals, temples, institutions, and ideologies in highly specific contexts, in which the who, what, when, where, and perhaps even why of the situation could be stated with a fair degree of certainty. In other words, the authors were asked to contribute what in ethnographic parlance can be called "thick descriptions," or in historiographic parlance "micro-histories." Moreover, the authors were asked to provide studies that investigated the Jains not in isolation, but rather in situations where they were in explicit or implicit interaction with the larger non-Jain social, cultural, and intellectual world of South Asia. The methodological thrust behind these two prerequisitesstudying the Jains (I) in specific contexts, and (2) of wider interactioncan be seen in the initial statement of purpose drafted by Richard Davis and myself for the 1991 conference panel which preceded Open Boundaries: We begin with the frank acknowledgement of the current marginality of Jain studies within the broader field of South Asian studies. At its simplest, our goal is to encourage and increase the study of the Jains. But it is not simply a matter of increasing quantity. Jain studies has historically been an intellectual ghetto, largely isolated from South Asian studies. We do not intend merely to enlarge the size of this ghetto. Rather, we wish to avoid approaches that constitute studies of the Jains as a subfield somehow separate from South Asian studies. We start with the recognition that the exclusion of the Jains from most studies of South Asia has had deleterious results in terms of our understandings of both the Jains and South Asia. At its simplest and most radical, the argument behind this project can be stated as follows: when one views the Jains within a South Asian context, the resultant portrait of the Jains is strikingly different from the received portrait, and equally the resultant portrait of South Asia is strikingly different.