Contribution of Jainas to Sanskrit and Prakrit Literature

Author(s): Vasantkumar Bhatt, Jitendra B Shah, Dinanath Sharma
Publisher: Kasturbhai Lalbhai Smarak Nidhi Ahmedabad

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Recent Fieldwork Studies of the Contemporary Jains
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The third section og TAOL presents studies that view some of the ways in which the Jains have interacted with and been situated in a larger Indian cultural universe (on which see also Cort 1998). Paul Dundas gives a close reading of the Digambar Jinasena's eighth century Adipurana, in which the author, writing for his Rāstrakūta royal patron, shows that the broader Indian understanding of kingship is inferior to the specifically Jain vision of the true warrior as "the individual who fights the spiritual battle and attains the permanent kingdom of liberation." Padmanabh S. Jaini's chapter is a rather argumentative discussion entitled "Is there a popular Jainism?" (reprinted at Jaini 2000 : 267-79), with the implicit answer being that while there is a popular Jainism, there shouldn't be. Jaini's discussion is marred by an unreflective model of the social dynamics of Jainism, which posits that all change is either consciously orchestrated by the mendicant leaders, with the laity following along obediently, or else the result of the laity's simple-minded borrowing of Brāhmaṇical customs. Further, Jaini's notion that there is a single, unchanging ideological core of Jainism, which consists of rigorous asceticism-a notion that also underlies his important 1979 The Jaina Path of Purification has been challenged in recent years, and needs to be set aside if Jain studies are to progress (see also Cort 1990a). The third chapter in this section is a thoughtprovoking exploration by Caroline Humphrey of an intertwined complex of miracles, temples, and fairs that, while taking place at Jain temples, attract a large number of non-Jain, and particularly tribal, participants. Humphrey shows some of the ways in which the Jain theological notion of the lack of any "real presence” in Jina images is largely irrelevant to the non-Jain devotees of the miracle-working images.
The fourth section of the book takes us outside the more traditional realm of Jain studies to explore Jains in twentieth-century India and England. Vilas Sangave briefly mentions some of the movements concerned with social and religious reform among the Jain community during this century. The usefulness of Sangave's article is vitiated, however, by a refusal to distinguish between the goals and the achievements of various movements, so the uninformed reader might be led to suppose that the movement to unite the Sthānakvāsī mendicant community under a single acarya was successful. (On Jain social movements, see also Cort 1995a and 1999a.) Michael Carrithers explores the rhetoric that has surrounded and informed social movements during this century among the Digambar Jains of the region of northern