Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekanta for Contemporary Life

Author(s): Tara Sethia
Publisher: California State Polytechnic University Pomona

Page 152

Tara Sethia, "Mahāvīra's Teachings in Indian History Textbooks"
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than has been granted in the received wisdom of Eurocentric social theory. Historians are also interested in examining historical narratives in ways these were constructed and approaching the past to depict how the contending agents constituted the past through their constant negotiations and interactions. Studies of Indian Religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, have continued to evoke scholarly interest. Even Jainism, which is not quite as established a field of study as Buddhism, has elicited a great deal of scholarly interest in the recent years.
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Yet, the majority of textbooks on Indian history continue to be chronologically driven political histories. The textbooks I have reviewed in this paper are written by internationally known scholars of India from Britain, Germany, India, and the United States, and are published by reputable publishers. Some of these
3 Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
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Some of the recent studies are: Richard King, Orientalism and Religion Postcolonial Theory, India and 'The Mystic East' (London: Routledge, 1999); Richard Gombrich, How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of Early Teachings (London: Athlone, 1996); Christopher, Key Chapple, Nonviolence to Animals, Earth and Self in Asian Traditions (New York: SUNY Press, 1993); Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan R. Williams (eds.), Buddhism and Ecology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker (eds), Hinduism and Ecology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); and Padmanabh S. Jaini, The Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2000).
5 Beginning with the publication of Padmanabh S. Jaini's, The Jaina Path of Purification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), which is regarded nearly as a primary source among Jain scholars, and which is both lucid and thorough in its analysis and discussion of Jainism, several key works have been published recently. Of particular mention are the following. Paul Dundas, The Jains (London: Routledge, 1992, revised edition 2002); Lawrence Babb, The Absent Lord (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); John E. Cort, Jains in the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Christopher Chapple (ed), Jainism and Ecology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Vastupal Parikh, Jainism and New Spirituality (Peace Publications, 2002). Moreover, Jaini's own essays on Jainism have also been reprinted recently as Collected Papers on Jaina Studies (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2000).
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