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
Most of the major studies of the Jains in India have been largely androcentric. This is not to say that they don't include women; but there is no gainsaying that the insights they provide into the Jain tradition are from a largely male perspective. Fortunately, while there is definitely a need for more gender-sensitive fieldwork study, there are already several good sources for investigating the experience of Jain laywomen. The 1985 Cambridge University dissertation and related articles (1985b, 1987a, 1987b) by Josephine Reynell are a rich source. In her chapter in TAOL, Reynell studies the role of women in the maintenance and reproduction of the Jain community. In the first half of her paper Reynell provides a useful ethnographic overview of the Svetambar Mūrtipujak Jain community of Jaipur. She observes that at the smallest religiosocial unit, that of the gacch (a lay congregation, based in turn upon a mendicant lineage), it is the women who most actively participate in many of the regular rituals, especially those involving fasting. These religiouslymotivated gatherings allow for the women to form close-knit networks that are called upon when arranging marriage alliances. While the men, through their commercial activities and their religious gifting (dan) are responsible for the material maintenance of the Jain community, the women through these rituals networks are equally in maintaining the community. In her 1985b article, she expands upon this contrast between the male emphasis on ostentatious giving and the female emphasis on renunciatory fasting. She focuses in part on the belief that according to the karmic logic of merit (punya) and demerit (pap) it is such renunciatory activity that leads to future wealth, while at the same time this activity favours the rich, not the poor. Her 1987a article further explores this theme, showing how religious values serve to control female sexuality by tying the moral character of a family-which character is essential for the economic activity of the men-to the religious and social conduct of the women.
Marie-Claude Mahia's 1985 Délivrance et convivialité, while not specifically a study of Jain women, does touch on Jain constructions of genderspecific roles in the context of her detailed study of foodways among the Agraval Digambar Jains of Delhi. The title of her book indicates what she sees as a basic structural oppositions underlying the entire Jain culinary system, between religious (dhārmik) values that stress the restriction and ultimate elimination of all intake of food in the pursuit of spiritual liberation, and social (sāmājik) values that stress the exchange and sharing of food in order to ensure the social connections essential for worldly, financial success. The way in which
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