Jain Digest 2003 09 Vol 22 No 3

Author(s): Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA

Page 10

JAIN STUDIES IN NORTH AMERICA: PROSPECTS AND OBSTACLES
John E. Cort, Denison University, Granville, Ohio
(John E. Cort is Professor of Asian Religions at Denison University Bloomfield's early work was in the fields of Vedic Studies and in Granville, Ohio, where he is also Director of the International Comparative Linguistics, and he is still recognized as one of the Studies Program, and teaches in the East Asian Studies and leading Western scholars of Vedic language and religion. Later in Environmental Studies Programs. He is the author of Jains in the his career he developed an interest in what he called "Hindu fiction," World (Oxford University Press, 2001) and several dozen scholarly by which he meant the vast ocean of medieval Indian narrative articles on Jainism. Here is reprint of his speech given at JAINA literature. It was this interest that brought him into Jain studies, Convention 2003)
for medieval Jain narrative literature is one of the principal sources Today, I have two tasks which I want to address in the few of Indian stories. Between 1913 and his death in 1928 he published minutes of my talk this morning. My first task is to provide a over a dozen lengthy studies of various motifs in Indic story brief overview of the history of Jain studies in North America. literature in leading scholarly journals. Each of these articles Given the rather small number of North American scholars who included extensive material from Jain texts. In these interlinking have studied Jainism, this overview by necessity must be brief. In studies, Bloomfield analyzed a series of folklore motifs, such as particular, I will focus my attention on three scholars from the talking birds, entering another person's body, women's pregnancy first half of the twentieth century. Looking at the story of these cravings, the consequences of accidently overhearing conversations, three scholars has some potentially important lessons for the future stealing, organized brigandage, and false ascetics and nuns. of Jain Studies in North America, for we see that the condition of An important result of Bloomfield's research into medieval Jain Studies has always been precarious at best.
Indian narrative literature was his 1919 The Life and Stories of the I will then turn my attention to the very recent—but also
Jaina Saviour Parshvanatha, published by the Johns Hopkins very fragile-renaissance of Jain studies. This will lead into my University Press. This was the very first book on Jainism published second task, as I will conclude with a few observations on alternate in the United States. In it he gave a detailed synopsis of the possible futures for Jain studies in North America. Whether or not fourteenth-century Parshvanatha Charitra of the Shvetambar monk there will continue to be Jain Studies in North America is to a Bhavadevasuri. In medieval times the telling of the life of significant degree in the hands of the Jains themselves in your Parshvanatha expanded to include the telling of the previous lives hands.
of both Parshvanatha and his foe Kamatha. This extended The early study of the Jains took place in England, Italy, France,
biographical frame allowed Bhavadevasuri to explain in great detail and especially Germany. Scholars there in the late nineteenth and
the workings of karma. Deeds, words, and thoughts in one life are carly twentieth century laid the foundations for all subsequent
shown to bear karmic fruit over many future births in hellish and academic study of Jainism in the West. Their studies also were
heavenly realms, as animals, and as humans. Many of the stories responsible for raising Western awareness of the importance of
in the biographies of Parshvanatha are distinctively Jain, and not Jainism as an ancient and still vibrant world religion.
found in any other literary milieus of medieval India. But many
other stories are shared with other literary traditions in India. They Americans came rather late to the study of the Jains. Only in
are found in Hindu literature, Buddhist literature, and folk the past fifteen years has North America become in any way a
literature. Bloomfield well understood that the study of Jain center of Jain studies. But there was a handful of pioneer scholars narrative literature is essential for an adequate understanding of in the first half of the twentieth century.
medieval Indian literature. The first American scholar to turn his attention to the Jains
Only one of the students who earned a Ph.D. under Bloomfield was the Sanskritist Maurice Bloomfield. He received his Ph.D. in
continued his interest in the study of Jain literature. This was W. 1879 from Johns Hopkins University for a dissertation on noun
Norman Brown.
N. formation in the Rig Veda. He then went to Germany, where he engaged in advanced studies in classical Indian languages for two
Brown was educated in an era when the emphasis in Indian years. Among his teachers was Albrecht Weber, one of the leading
studies was on the study of the classical Indian texts in their original European scholars of the Jains. Bloomfield returned to Johns
languages. Students were assumed already to have a grounding in Hopkins in 1881 to take up the position of Professor of Sanskrit
Latin and Greek for the classics, and in French and German in and Comparative Philology. In addition to teaching Sanskrit, he
order to be current with continental scholarship. They were then also taught Pali, and was perhaps the first American to teach Jain
rigorously trained in Sanskrit, since this was seen to be the essential Prakrit.
tool for understanding India. 8/ JAIN DIGEST. Fall 2003
wy.