Jain Heritage and Beyond

Author(s): Shailesh Shah
Publisher: Oshwal Associations of The UK

Page 93

A Short History of Jaina Studies
by Peter Flugel. SOAS
with the correct perfome pain tradition. Self descrip
It is often said that Jains are very enthusiastic about erecting temples, shrines or upasrayas but not much interested in promoting religious education, especially not the modern academic study of Jainism. Most practising Jains are more concerned with the 'correct' performance of rituals rather than with the understanding of their meaning and of the history and doctrines of the Jain tradition. Self-descriptions such as these undoubtedly reflect important facets of contemporary Jain life, though the attitudes toward higher education have somewhat changed during the last century. This trend is bound to continue due to the demands of the information based economies of the future, and because of the vast improvements in the formal educational standards of the Jains in India. In 1891, the Census of India recorded a literacy rate of only 1.4% amongst Jain women and of 53.4% amongst Jain men. In 2001 the female literacy rate has risen to 90.6% and for the Jains altogether to 94.1%. Statistically, the Jains are now the best educated community in India, apart from the Parsis. Amongst young Jains in the UK and in North America, not only basic education but University degrees are already the rule and perceived to be a key ingredient in the life-course of a successful Jain. The combined impact of the increasing educational sophistication and of the growing materialism amongst the Jains on traditional Jain culture is widely felt and often lamented. In particular the Jain mendicants, whose daily sermons dominated traditional Jain religious education for centuries, and the few remaining Jain Pandits, face an uphill struggle to adapt to the rapidly changing social and cultural environment, and sometimes choose to combine monastic and academic training to keep up with the rising expectations of their followers.
The dramatic changes within the Jain community were prompted by successive modern religious and social reform movements which were instigated both by individual Jain laymen and laywomen, often by lawyers who were the first Jains with modern University education, and by individual Jain mendicants. The reformers faced strong resistance, in particular in the field of religious education which is vital for the transmission of the tradition. The publication of Jain scriptures, for instance, which was pioneered by Indian and European Indologists from 1808 onwards, was obstructed, sometimes violently, by 'orthodox' Jains who objected to the cruelty of the printing press to micro-organisms, and to the open accessibility of the sacred scriptures. Before the appearance of the first printed editions of the Shwetambara scriptures by Ray Dhanpatsinha Bahadur in 1874 (in the Prakrit original) and by Acharya Amolakarsi in 1916-1919 (with Hindi translation) primary access to the sacred texts was unattainable for Jain shravakas and shravikas, and certain sections of the Agamas were (and sometimes still are) off limits even for nuns and junior monks. This explains, in part, why rituals and public celebrations were for millennia the only form of religiosity open to the Jain laity. Studying the original scriptures was not an option, except for the few who had access to the bhandaras and who knew the languages of the ancient texts; an expertise which was almost entirely lost during the first half of the 19th century, even amongst Jain monks. Instead, the handwritten manuscripts became objects of ritual veneration, notwithstanding the fact that in some late canonical scriptures the process of writing itself is rejected due to its cruelty to single-sensed organisms.
Because, for the said reasons, no textual evidence was presented in public, 'Jainism/Jinism' was not recognised as an independent 'religion' until 1879 when Hermann Jacobi in the introduction of his edition of the Kalpasutra of Bhadrabahu furnished for the first time textual proof that the ancient Hindu and Buddhist scriptures already depicted the nigganthas as a separate 'heretical' group. With this, Jaina Studies was established as an independent academic field. Before Jacobi, the Jains were regarded either as 'Buddhists' or as a 'Hindu sect'. The political value of the academic study of Jainism and of Jacobi's findings in particular was instantly realised by the educated Jain elite, who for some time demanded the public recognition of 'Jainism' and the 'Jainas' from the government and in the courts. Like the use of the word 'Hindu', the use of the Sanskrit word 'Jainal as a selfdesignation (not in the sense of 'pertaining to the Jinas') seems to be a modern invention, which was popularised by Jain leaders in the 19th century, particularly in the Panjab, most likely for the purpose of, nominally, presenting a united front of the different sectarian traditions. Officially, the category 'Jain' was used for the first time in 1881 in the Census of India which still remains the only government institution which classifies Jains as
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