Jain Digest 2003 09 Vol 22 No 3

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

Page 11

JAIN STUDIES IN N. AMERICA....(cont)
But Brown's approach to India was in significant degree also Johnson. She earned a Ph.D. in the Greek Classics from the shaped by a childhood spent partly in India, where he was the son University of Wisconsin in 1912. of a Christian missionary father. From the age of eight until he Most of Johnson's scholarly career was devoted to a translation was thirteen from 1900 to 1905-he lived with his family in of the massive Sanskrit Trishashri Shalaka Purusha Charitra, or Jabalpur in Central India. As a result, he combined an interest in "Lives of the Sixty-Three Famous Men," by the twelfth century the history of India with an understanding of contemporary India. Hemachandra. She also spent extensive time in India, reading the
Brown returned for his college education to the United States, Trishashti with Jain monks and lay scholars. where he attended Johns Hopkins University. He studied Greek Tohnson's translation encompasses six large volumes, totalling as an undergraduate, and then Arabic and Indology as a graduate several thousand pages. It is one of the underacknowledged student. He studied Sanskrit, Vedic, Prakrit, and comparative masterworks of Indological scholarship. It was published by the linguistics under Maurice Bloomfield. Brown then held post- Oriental Institute of Baroda in its Gackwad's Oriental Series. Her doctoral and teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania translation is in a lucid English style. Her long study of the text and Johns Hopkins University. For three years he taught at the with Jain scholars allowed her to provide copious notes on a wide Prince of Wales College in Jammu. In 1926 he was appointed array of religious and cultural references. The extent and detail of Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Pennsylvania.
her scholarship meant that these books are more than a simple Much of Brown's scholarship between 1929 and 1941 focused translation. They comprise a complete introduction to Jainism. on medieval Shvetambar illustrated manuscripts. Brown integrated The Trishashti is a telling of the lives of the sixty-three great the study of the stories themselves with the study of the lavish men (shalaka purusha) of this era of time. These are the twentyillustrations of the manuscripts of the narrative texts. He was a four Jinas or Tirthankaras, the twelve Chakravartins, the nine pioneer scholar of Jain art. As a result of his scholarship in Indian Baladevas or righteous kings who include among their number art, he was appointed the Curator of Indian Art at the Philadelphia Rama and Balabhadra: the nine Vasudevas, their half-brothers who Museum of Art in 1931, a post he held until 1954.
are also half-Chakravartins in their status and power, and include Brown travelled to India in 1928-29, where he was able to Lakshmana and Krishna; and finally the nine Prativasudevas, the work in Jain libraries in Ahmedabad, Patan, Cambay, and Shivpuri. opponents of the Vasudevas who include Ravana and Jarasandha. He studied with many of the leading monks and lay scholars of As with the lives of the Jinas in the Jain Puranas, these sixty-three Shvetambar Jainism. His first book on the Jains was The Story of biographies provided Hemachandra with the opportunity to Kalaka, published in 1933. Brown analyzed the texts and recount many past lives and other stories, for the moral edification illustrations that tell the story of Kalaka, an ancient Shvetambar of his audience. monk who called the Shahi kings to India to defeat the wicked Helen Johnson, however, despite all her expertise, never had king Gardabhilla of Ujjain, who had kidnapped Kalaka's sister. the opportunity to teach Jainism. She spent her career as a teacher This book was the second on Jainism to be published in the United of Latin in a small town in Missouri. States. In it he combined his skills in Sanskrit and Prakrit with his . We see here a distinctive American scholarly lineage of Jain skills as an art historian. Brown employed a similar
Studies. It starts with Maurice Bloomfield, and then includes his multidisciplinary methodology to study two more Shvetambar
students W. Norman Brown and Helen Johnson. This lineage did texts, the Kalpa Sutra and Uttaradhyayana Sutra, published in 1934
not, however, result in any long-lasting presence of Jain studies in and 1941, respectively.
North America. Bloomfield and Brown were hired by Johns After the 1930s, however, most of Brown's scholarly attention Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania to teach turned elsewhere, in particular to the Hindu Vedic literature. But Sanskrit and other Indian languages. As part of this they also Brown is best remembered today as an important figure in the taught related areas of Indian literature, culture, and history. But development of modern South Asian Studies in the United States they were not hired to teach Jainism. Nor was there any expectation after the Second World War. Under his leadership, the first on the part of their institutions that they study Jainism. It is our Department of South Asian Regional Studies in the U. S. was good fortune that they did so, but there was no institutional started at the University of Pennsylvania in 1948. This is now one commitment to supporting these particular studies. Because of of the premier centers in North America for the study of India. this lack of permanent institutional support, for many decades in Norman Brown also helped found the American Institute of Indian the middle of the twentieth century there in essence were no Jain Studies, which today is one of the most successful organizations in studies in North America. the world at sponsoring the academic study of India.
In the past twenty-five years, however, there has been a One other scholar continued in the study of Jain narrative renaissance of Jain studies in North America. Twenty-one doctoral literature started by Maurice Bloomfield. This was Helen M.
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