Aesthetics of Sovereignty: the Poetic and Material Worlds of Medieval Jainism
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Aesthetics of Sovereignty: The Poetic and Material Worlds of Medieval Jainism Sarah Pierce Taylor University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Asian Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Religion Commons, and the South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Taylor, Sarah Pierce, "Aesthetics of Sovereignty: The Poetic and Material Worlds of Medieval Jainism" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2052. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2052 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2052 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Aesthetics of Sovereignty: The Poetic and Material Worlds of Medieval Jainism Abstract "Aesthetics of Sovereignty" explores how premodern religious communities employed narrative as a site to imagine ideal political worlds in ways that exceeded the capacity of formal philosophical and politico- theoretical discourse. Taking the Digambara Jain community of the ninth and tenth-century western Deccan as my primary focus, I argue that Jains theorized, modeled, and continually revised what it meant to be both a king and a Jain through literary and material improvisations with the narrative of the first Tīrthaṅkara Ādinātha (a genre known as the Ādipurāṇa). From the proposition that worldly sovereignty culminates in renunciation in Jinasēna’s Ādipurāṇa (c. 860 C.E.) and the devolution of courtly erotic love into devotional affect in Pampa’s Ādipurāṇaṃ (941 C.E.), to the vision of an ideal king as Jain devotee in the Cāvuṇḍarāya Purāṇaṃ (978 C.E.), my dissertation tracks shifting Jain experiments with language, genre, and artistic mediums that reflect broader attempts to imagine ideal worlds structured around perfected notions of worldly and spiritual sovereignty. In tracking these various Jain improvisations with the Ādipurāṇa, this dissertation demonstrates a broader Jain investment in the imaginative capacity of narrative to mediate between worldly and spiritual concerns. In so doing, I argue that Jains consistently sought to conceptually figure the worldly and spiritual, the political and religious, and even the sexual and the ascetic, as deeply imbricated social worlds rather than binaristic categories of human activity. By aestheticizing sovereignty, Jain poets created an imaginative space in which intense relations to the world could be made functional for Jain religious practice. The larger effect of this early medieval Jain political encounter, was to fundamental transform Jainism itself. What we are left with is a novel vision of Jainism: one that encourages subjects to let go of their loves only after holding onto them for a lifetime or three, one the demands renunciation of the world but only after you have conquered the eight directions as a cakravartin or sovereign emperor. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group South Asia Regional Studies First Advisor Daud Ali Keywords courtly culture, Jainism, Kannada, literature, Sanskrit, South Asia Subject Categories Asian Studies | Comparative Literature | Religion | South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2052 AESTHETICS OF SOVEREIGNTY: THE POETIC AND MATERIAL WORLDS OF MEDIEVAL JAINISM Sarah Pierce Taylor A DISSERTATION in South Asia Regional Studies Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation ___________________________________ Dr. Daud Ali, Associate Professor of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania Graduate Group Chairperson ___________________________________ Dr. Daud Ali, Associate Professor of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania Dissertation Committee Dr. Anne Monius, Professor of Asian Religion, Harvard Divinity School Dr. Deven Patel, Associate Professor of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania For Christopher, Percy, and Byron ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Medieval Jain authors knew that all creative enterprises are produced through the model of others and the collective accumulation of knowledge passed down generation after generation. With this self-awareness, Jains commenced their text in praise of their teachers and lineages. In this vein, I begin by thanking my adviser Daud Ali for his penetrating intellect, guidence, and humor. His "Making Medieval India" class in my second year was a pivotal moment when I realized that my interest in religion existed within something called "the medieval." I am forever indebted to Daud for giving me the framework of an academic field and the epigraphical skills and historical sensibility to work within it. I would like to thank Anne Monius for her brilliant advice, intellectual rigor, friendship, and abiding appreciation of the Jains. Every word in this disseration (and even those that did not make it in) she diligently read over the course of many years. She did this under no institutional obligation, but out of intellectual curiosity and the goodness of her heart. Throughout, Anne has been the best possible model of how to be a professor and a person. This dissertation would also not have been possible with out the tireless energy of Deven Patel. His enthusiasm for South Asian literature and aesthetics is infectious and he has been consistently encouraging and generous with his time when I feel that Sanskrit has gotten the best of me. Over the years, he fielded endless questions about the intricacies of Jinasēna's Sanskrit when Jinasēna and I were fighting. He proved a more than adept mediator. John Cort has played the role of friend, mentor, counselor, dissertation reader, among many many others. I know I am not alone in receiving his unending goodwill and boundless knowledge about the Jains. My dissertation also bears iii the intellectual imprint of both Rupa Viswanath and Lisa Mitchell whose critiques were formative to my thinking and whose forms of care were essential to its maintenance. I would like to acknowledge the influence of Justin McDaniel in introducing me to the theoretically interesting world of Buddhism and material culture. Similarly, Michael Meister opened up for me the world of South Asia Art History and the importance of putting discursive and visual materials into conversation. Part way through my dissertation research, Professor Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, my undergraduate adviser at McGill University, died suddenly. Along with the marvelous Davesh Soneji, she encouraged me to go to graduate school and specifically suggested the Masters of Theological Studies program at Harvard Divinity School. My contact with Professor Aitken changed the trajectory that my life would follow in the best possible ways and I only regret that I did not get to more fulsomely thank her in person. The death of K.V. Ramesh also marred the production of this dissertation. Dr. Ramesh and I had just started to read medieval Kannada epigraphy when he passed away in 2013. My efforts at reading Rāṣṭrakūṭa inscriptions acutely suffered in his absence. Collectively, all of these individuals have shaped me every step along the way of my academic career. I am grateful to have received such wonderful teaching and guidance that helped me to produce this dissertation, although all of its faults and flaws are purely my own. Support for this dissertation came first through an American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Junior Fellowship for eleven months of research in India. This was followed by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) that provided for three additional months of research in India and four months in London at iv the British Library. These funding bodies are the sustenance of academic life and I am forever indebted for the opportunities they afforded me. At the AIIS, I would like to specifically thank Philip Lutdendorf, Rebbecca Manring, Poornima Mehta, Purushottama Bilimale and, especially, the tireless Elise Auberbach. At Fulbright, I would like to acknowledge S.K. Bharati and Vinita Tripathi for so beautifully facilitating my trip to India. Beyond external funding sources, this dissertation simply would not have been possible without the institutional support of the University of Pennsylvania. From pre- dissertation and dissertation research to the dissertation completion process, UPenn has been inexhaustibly generous. In the School of Arts & Science Graduate Division, I would like to thank Tracey Turner and especially Judith Reed Tjiattas for making sure that I received my fellowship monies and for always ensuring that I had healthcare. Within the Department of South Asia Studies, I am grateful to Jody Chavez, Zoe Beckerman, and Raili Roy for managing the mundane, but ever so important, features of departmental life. The department was greatly strengthened and enhanced by the addition of Professor Ramya Sreenivasan. Her unflagging support of my project and career during her term as chair has been invaluable. My final year of dissertation writing was funded by a Five College Fellowship in the Religion Department at Mount Holyoke College. I could not have imagined a more perfect place to finish my dissertation and to have my first job. At Mount Holyoke, the Religion faculty