Search Results (6)

Among the Dharmic religious traditions, Jainism is unique for its continuous tradition of female monastics. Jain monastic women have made up a large part of Jain communities up to this day. Naturally, their prominent position in Jain society is reflected in the countless depictions of Jain nuns (āryikā/sādhvī) in Jain narrative literature. However, despite Jain narratives sometimes extolling renunciation as an alternative, often even superior, ideal to wifehood, there remains a fundamental tension between the ideologies of normative Jain wifehood and renunciation as well as the question of widowhood. In this article, I explore how two Digambara Sanskrit texts deal with the question of premature widowhood and renunciation in their adaptation of the Mahābhārata narrative. Whereas Jinasena’s Harivaṃśapurāṇa (783 CE) stress the value of pativratā-ideology as an appropriate response for prematurely widowed young Jain women, Śubhacandra’s Pāṇḍavapurāṇa (1552 CE) adapts the exact same episodes, but introduces an explicit ambivalence towards the idea of young Jain women renouncing to become Jain nuns. By comparing these two Digambara adaptations, I wish to show how Digambara Jain narratives in Sanskrit dealt with the same tension between Jain wifehood and renunciation hitherto mostly discussed with reference to Jain narratives in the vernacular. Full article

Throughout the centuries, Jaina authors actively engaged in producing their own versions of stories that were told in sources such as the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, and the purāṇas. These authors self-consciously present themselves as correcting preceding narratives that they do not accept as credible. However, the question arises: what criteria determine the credibility of one version over another? This paper offers one possible answer as it appears in the Investigation of Dharma (Dharmaparīkṣā), a Jaina narrative that has been retold repeatedly in different languages throughout the second millennium. By examining its earliest available retellings—in Apabhramsha (988 CE) and Sanskrit (1014 CE)—I argue that this narrative traces the credibility of stories to the ideas of (1) coherence across textual boundaries and (2) correspondence with real-life experience. In this paper, I trace how these notions manifest in the Investigation and analyze the narrative’s mechanism for training its audience to evaluate for themselves the credibility of stories. Through this analysis, the paper offers a fresh perspective on the motivations of premodern South Asian authors to retell existing narratives and sheds light on the reading practices they expect from their audience. Full article

Debates on war and peace within Jain and Hindu traditions revolve around the fear of incurring individual bad karma from violence, potentially inhibiting the individual’s journey to spiritual liberation. Generally, the religious culture of both Jain and Hindu traditions elevates nonviolence to one of the highest moral principles. Jainism embraces ahiṃsā (non-harming) as the central doctrine, and Hindu traditions exalt non-harming as one of the highest disciplines and virtues (dharma). However, a personal spiritual commitment to nonviolence creates tension with the humanistic value of striving for an ethic of social justice and peace. Maintaining social harmony sometimes requires confrontation or targeted violence. It is not surprising that while both traditions laud ahiṃsā for personal peace, they also deliberate on the challenge of using necessary violence to maintain an orderly society. Despite sanctioning limited violence (hiṃsā) in acute situations, various texts and myths express a general suspicion for using war or other aggressive methods to solve social and political problems. Full article

Supernatural entities are often described as ambiguous, but ambiguity is underdetermined and undefined. This article has a twofold goal: first of all, it constructs an ideal-type model for identifying and specifying ambiguity in supernatural beings; secondly, it examines the ambiguity of yakṣas in the Araṇya Parva of the Mahābhārata. This model for determining supernatural ambiguity utilizes five markers, which appear in either a positive or negative aspect: fulfilling or denying needs and desires; protecting or attacking humans; belonging to the same order as humansor rejecting this order; beautiful or hideous appearance; and living close by or far away from human communities. Four narratives are examined: the story of Nala and Damayantī, the First and Second War of the Yakṣas, and the story of the Drillling Woods. In all stories, each of the five markers are utilized to describe the yakṣas’ ambiguity. However, one should distinguish between ambiguity proper (when conflicting markers are present at the same time) verus ambiguity caused by the shifting of markers during a narrative. Full article

This paper will analyse a series of dialogues that features kings named Janaka, which appear in the Śānti Parvan of the Mahābhārata. Although there is some variation among these episodes, kings named Janaka tend to be characterised as exemplary rulers who engage in dialogue with learned philosophers and who are strongly associated with the ideals of self-cultivation, renunciation, and liberation. I will argue that the name Janaka functions as a conceptual repertoire for ideas and practices associated with a particular understanding of royal authority. As I will show, the dialogues featuring kings named Janaka characterise sovereignty as both dynamic and fragile because the king is always in the process of displaying his knowledge and self-control. In this way, the different dialogical episodes featuring different Janakas conceptualise political authority differently, thus contributing to an ongoing, inter-textual and inter-religious discussion about sovereignty in ancient India. Full article

The idea of a univocal property of ‘goodness’ is not clearly found in classical Sanskrit sources; instead, a common ethical strategy was to clarify the ontological nature of the self or world in such a way that ethical implications naturally flow from the adjustment in our thinking. This article gives a synoptic reading of sources that treat features of ethics—dispositions, agents, causal systems of effect, and even values themselves—as emergent phenomena grounded in complex, shifting, porous configurations. One conclusion of this was that what ‘goodness’ entails varies according to the scope and context of our concern. Firstly, we examine how the Bhagavad Gītā fashions a utilitarianism that assumes no universal intrinsically valuable goal or Good, but aims only to sustain the world as a prerequisite for choice. Recognising that this pushes problems of identifying the Good onto the individual; secondly, we look at accounts of malleable personhood in the Caraka Saṃhitā and Book 12 of the Mahābhārata. Finally, the aesthetic theory of the Nāṭya Śāstra hints at a context-constituted conception of value itself, reminding us that evaluative emotions are themselves complex, curate-able, and can expand beyond egoism to encompass interpersonal concerns. Together these sources show aspects of an ethical worldview for which each case is a nexus in a larger ethical fabric. Each tries to pry us away from our most personal concerns, so we can reach beyond the ego to do what is of value for a wider province of which we are a part. Full article