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News and Announcements
Jain Studies Chair at University of Toronto
by S.K. Jain, Covenor, Jain Studies Program, Toronto
A Jain Studies Fund has been established at the University of Toronto to promote research, lectures and courses on Jainism.
The University of Toronto is a major educational institution of Central Canada for Indian studies. The Centre for South Asian Studies coordinates or cross-lists several courses on Indian religions at the University of Toronto. However, no course on Jain studies has been offered at Toronto or at any other Canadian university so far.
It is hoped that with the funds deposited in the Jain Studies Fund, the University of Toronto will be able to hire a Jain specialist, who can offer a full course on Jain studies in not too distant a future (a singleterm course is scheduled for 1993).
The ultimate objective of the Jain Studies Fund is to finance a Chair of Jain Studies, offering a range of courses on Jain art, literature, religion and philosophy at the University of Toronto. It is a very costly proposition. Roughly one-half million dollars are required to sponsor an academic Chair at a Canadian university. At least one-half of this amount must be raised by the community sponsoring the Chair. The rest of the amount can be procured by making grant applications to the federal and provincial governments. The federal government has given matching grants in the past, dollar for dollar, to help establish and maintain such Chairs, e.g., the one established at the University of British Columbia for Sikh Studies.
Ten percent of the required amount (i.e., approximately $25,000) has alread been deposited with the
Jain Education International 2010_02
Jain Digest
University of Toronto for Jain Stud
ies.
Further information regarding the Jain Studies Fund may be obtained by contacting Dr. A. Wagle, Director, Centre for South Asian studies, University of Toronto, Sydney Smith Hall, Toronto, M5S 1S1 (Tel: 416-978-4294). Jain Art Exhibition
First Major Exhibition to be held in U.S.A.
by Drs. Pratapditya Pal & Siddharth Bhansali, Indian & Southeast Asian Art, Los Angles, CA
Despite the comparatively small size of the community, Jains have proved significant patrons of religious and cultural institutions throughout history, responsible, for instance, for some of India's most magnificent temples. Nonetheless, past Western exhibitions and surveys of Indian art have devoted less emphasis to Jain art than to that of Hindu and Buddhist cultures, ignoring Jainism as a distinct tradition. In order to redress the imbalance as well as provide the public with a comprehensive introduction to the essentials of the Jain faith and its art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is developing a special traveling exhibition The Peaceful Conquerors: Jain Art from India. Scheduled to open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in October 1994, the exhibition will travel to the Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
As its primary goal, the exhibition will expose broad audiences to the art and significant role of the Jain tradition within India's cultural history. Composed of approximately 150 works of art drawn from North American, European and Indian collections, the exhibition will provide a chronological presentation of the history and the essential characteristics of Jain art, which spans a period of more than two-thousand
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years. It will be the most extensive presentation of Jain art ever assembled, including sculptures of metal and stone, paintings on palm leaf, paper and cloth, textiles, ritual objects, and historical photographs. To accompany the exhibition, a fully illustrated catalogue is also planned which will serve as an important resource on the culture and religious arts of the Jains.
In addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's curators of Indian art, Pratapaditya Pal, Janice Leoshko and Stephen Markel, noted scholars such as Shridhar Andhare, Director of the Lalbhai Dalpatbai Institute Museum at Ahmedabad, Sadashiv Gorakshakar, Director of the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay and John Guy, Deputy Keeper of Indian Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, will contribute to the exhibition and catalogue. Padmanabh Jaini, Professor of Religion at the University of California at Berkeley, John Cort, Professor of Religion at Denison University, and the Jainologist M.A. Dhaky of the American Institute of Indian Studies, Varanasi, will also be involved.
For further information regarding the show, contact Dr. Siddharth Bhansali, 2633 Napoleon Ave., Suite 500, New Orleans, LA 70115, (504) 861-9351.
Lord Mahavir
भगवान महावीर This picture was drawn by Achla Agarwal of Shreveport, LA on a personal computer.
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