4,416 research outputs found
Conversations with authors: Saskya Jain
No full textA 2011 conversation with the author Saskya Jain about her life and the inspiration for her work
Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives
No full textJain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation traces how and why Jain authors at different points in history rewrote the story of Rāma and situates these texts within larger frameworks of South Asian religious history and literature. The book argues that the plot, characters, and the very history of Jain Rāma composition itself served as a continual font of inspiration for authors to create and express novel visions of moral personhood. In making this argument, the book examines three versions of the Rāma story composed by two authors, separated in time and space by over 800 years and thousands of miles. The first is Raviṣeṇa, who composed the Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa (“The Deeds of Padma”), and the second is Brahma Jinadāsa, author of both a Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa and a vernacular (bhāṣā) version of the story titled Rām Rās (“The Story of Rām”). While the three compositions narrate the same basic story and work to shape ethical subjects, they do so in different ways and with different visions of what a moral person actually is. A close comparative reading focused on the differences between these three texts reveals the diverse visions of moral personhood held by Jains in premodernity and demonstrates the innovative narrative strategies authors utilized in order to actualize those visions. The book is thus a valuable contribution to the fields of Jain studies and religion and literature in premodern South Asia
THE JAIN CENTRE IN LEICESTER
No full textThis dissertation discusses the formative years of the Jain Centre, Leicester, from 1979 when Jain Samaj Leicester, the community body of the Jains in Leicester, bought a dilapidated former chapel and set about converting it into a centre for the community. Central in the plan was the religious dimension which was to unite four "sects" of Jainism under one roof, Svetambara, Digambara, Sthanakvasi and the devotees of Srimad Rajchandra. The prehistory of Jain Samaj is looked at briefly, from the first meetings in members' homes and the formal foundation of Jain Samaj Leicester in 1973. In the main body of the dissertation, in Chapter Three, the approach is largely historical, with the key events being singled out for detailed examination. The account is taken right up-to-date, to 2001. A final chapter analyses the factors which led to the success of this venture.
Chapter One provides essential introductory orientation on the Jains, both as a community and as followers of an ancient religion, relating this to the situation of the Jains in Leicester. In a second part of this chapter sources and methodology are outlined. Primary sources comprise
(a) Information from members of the Jain community,
(b) Participant observation by the author over a quarter of a century,
(c) A large collection of written material put together over the years and comprising letters, notices and much more from Jain Samaj and others, and runs of the newsletters and journal published by Jain Samaj, as well as news cuttings, particularly from the local press.
These three sources have been of roughly equal weight.
Secondary sources are the author's own collection of some 200 books and pamphlets on Jainism and the Jains, together with the resources of other libraries particularly that of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Chapter Two provides a description of the Jain Centre and examines some aspects of its functioning. Chapter Four is devoted to the temple, its architecture and iconography, and the religious life centred there.
Finally, in Chapter Five an analysis is made of some key aspects of the Centre's history, and a tentative forecast of the future is attempted
Interview with S. Lochlann Jain
No full textProf. S. Lochlann Jain (he/him, they/them) is a Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University and Visiting Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. Jain is an award-winning scholar, artist, and author of three books: Injury (Princeton University Press, 2006), Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013), and Things that Art (University of Toronto Press, 2019).
Jain’s work lies at the intersection of science and technology studies, history, political economy, gender and sexuality, biology, and medicine and aims to unsettle some of the deeply held assumptions about objectivity that underlie the politics and history of medical research. His book Malignant traces the contested concepts of cancer that lie at the core of debates over cause, treatment, responsibility, and national progress, aiming to show why cancer remains such an intractable medical, social, and economic problem that takes millions of lives, while it both costs and generates billions of dollars.
Jain has won numerous prizes in anthropology, medical journalism, and science and technology studies, including the Staley Prize, June Roth Memorial Award, Fleck Prize, Edelstein Prize, Victor Turner Prize, and the Diana Forsythe Prize. His work has been supported by Stanford Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and the National Humanities Center
Evaluating the reliability of an authoritative discourse in a Jain epistemological eulogy of the 6th c.
No full textThis paper explores the coexistence of more apologetic and of more systematic considerations in the Āpta-mīmāṁsā (ĀMī), Investigation on authority, of the Jain author Samantabhadra (530–590). First, this treatise offers a relevant case study to investigate the transition from a conception in which the reliability criterion of an authoritative discourse is the authoritative character of its utterer, to a conception in which the criteria of validity and soundness of the discourse itself are foremost. Second, Samantabhadra is one of the first authors to undertake to logically prove the omniscience of the Jain teachers. And third, he links these questions to the celebrated Jain epistemological theory of non-one-sidedness
Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation
No full textJain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation traces how and why Jain authors at different points in history rewrote the story of Rāma and situates these texts within larger frameworks of South Asian religious history and literature.
The book argues that the plot, characters, and the very history of Jain Rāma composition itself served as a continual font of inspiration for authors to create and express novel visions of moral personhood. In making this argument, the book examines three versions of the Rāma story composed by two authors, separated in time and space by over 800 years and thousands of miles. The first is Raviṣeṇa, who composed the Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa (“The Deeds of Padma”), and the second is Brahma Jinadāsa, author of both a Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa and a vernacular (bhāṣā) version of the story titled Rām Rās (“The Story of Rām”). While the three compositions narrate the same basic story and work to shape ethical subjects, they do so in different ways and with different visions of what a moral person actually is. A close comparative reading focused on the differences between these three texts reveals the diverse visions of moral personhood held by Jains in premodernity and demonstrates the innovative narrative strategies authors utilized in order to actualize those visions.
The book is thus a valuable contribution to the fields of Jain studies and religion and literature in premodern South Asia.https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/mono/1184/thumbnail.jp
Who Are Jain - A Reappraisal [Author Copy]
No full textIt is reasonable to conclude that jain (all lower case letters) are a people who carry the following three ancestries, to a differing extent. Probably the most dominant is the kṣatrīya ancestry; “early farmers from southwestern Iran” [Quintana-Murci et al, 2001]; “early farmers of western Iran” [Lazaridis et al, 2016]; “genetic outliers from sites in Iran and Turkmenistan” [Shinde et al, 2019]; “early hunter-gatherers of Iran”; [Narsimhan et al, 2019]; we have called them simply ‘farmers-herders from the foothills of the Zagros mountains’. Next is the kirāt ancestry; ‘migrants from China and East Asia, who entered the Indian peninsula around 6,000 BCE from the north-east’. The last, and probably the least, is the native Indian ancestry. This is the ancestry derived from the early Anatomically Modern Humans who evolved in the sub-continent, or travelled there from Africa. Probably we do not find any communities in India at present who carry exclusively the native Indian ancestry; the closest we can get are the vēḍār of Sri Lanka
Evaluating spatial equity in bike share systems
No full textThis research analyzes 10 of the largest third generation docked bike share systems in the United States along with 3 docked bike share systems in New Jersey. These bike share systems were carefully selected to reflect diversity in their size and age, and their host region’s size and geography as well as data availability.This report was developed by the New Jersey Bicycle and Pedestrian Resource Center within the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The research team included Charles T. Brown, MPA, Principal Investigator, Devajyoti Deka, PhD, Aashna Jain, Anish Grover, and Qingyang Xie. The Center is supported by the New Jersey Department of Transportation through funds provided by the Federal Highway Administration
Moral Panic, Social Exclusion and The Human Rights of Same-Sex Partners in Ghana-RETRACTED
No full textThis article is retracted :
The retraction is based on the request of the author, Dr. Neha Jain, as it contains some exclusive and private data of a community out of India, that should not be released online. https://doi.org/10.55938/ijgasr.v1i3.20
Sincerely,Editorial Team, IJGASR
Announcement: https://journals.icapsr.com/index.php/ijgasr/announcement/view/17
Up in alms, portraits in giving: the Śālibhadra Caupaī and Jain art in early modern South Asia
No full textMy dissertation examines early modern painted iterations of the Shvetambara Jain narrative tale the Śālibhadra Caupaī from Rajasthan and Gujarat. It highlights the role of Jain communities in eighteenth century visual culture. This study demonstrates how the vernacular visual vocabulary seen in illustrated Jain manuscripts existed in dialogue with courtly traditions and epitomized elitist merchant culture while conveying Jain ideals. Directed at the merchant community, the Śālibhadra Caupaī, a seventeenth century narrative tale in old Gujarati, extolls the benefits of almsgiving to the monastic community. While the end goal remains (self-)realization of the futility of worldly ties, Śālibhadra’s story which is meant to be performed with music, promises an individual’s success in worldly as well as religious affairs. The illustrated Śālibhadra manuscripts concretely visualize this success through sumptuous imagery of a luxuriant and flourishing Jain merchant culture. They display essential characteristics of vernacular art: simplicity, ease of accessibility, freedom of expression, line driven qualities, energetic rendering and preference for bold colors. Their greater production and visibility establishes their importance as a window into the visual culture of the period, otherwise overshadowed by the illustrious narrative of courtly paintings. This focus on courtly art is largely responsible for the lack of interest in and marginalization of vernacular aesthetics which are equally important in defining early modern visual culture.
This study examines twenty-one painted manuscripts of the Śālibhadra Caupaī from western India. They range from the early seventeenth till the end of the eighteenth centuries and are presently located in Jain Shastra Bhandaras (libraries), museums and archives in India and abroad. The text, meant to be performed with music, is composed as a versified poem in old Gujarati and is generally arranged into 536 stanzas and 29 dhalas (manners/modes), each of which with the exception of the last ends in a chorus. Except for one in the bound vertical format, all the manuscripts are in the horizontal pothi (loose leaf folios bound by a string/wooden covers) format, emulating the palm-leaf manuscript style and the material used is handmade paper, ink and watercolors with occasional use of gold leaf.
By focusing on a group of manuscripts, often considered folk and simplistic, through the lens of pictorial vernacular this dissertation draws much needed attention to the painterly practices outside courtly circles. There is a tacit assumption that Jain painting exists in a state of decline post sixteenth century. Apart from studies on particular isolated genres of Jain painting of the later period such as cosmological texts, vijnaptipatras (letters of invitation), pilgrimage patas, hardly any studies consider the Jain painting tradition in totality and in dialogue with parallel traditions. Through a close study of the visual vocabulary of the Śālibhadra manuscripts coupled with an examination of textual sources, catalogues of collections of manuscripts and colophon studies, secondary art historical and historical readings of the early modern period, this dissertation extends the chronology of Jain painting beyond the sixteenth century and demonstrates their significant contribution to eighteenth century visual culture. Chapter one defines the vernacular genre of art as seen in the Śālibhadra manuscripts and contextualizes its development in the context of burgeoning Krishna bhakti (as seen in literature and art) in early modern western India along with the socio- economic and political changes seen in the region. It also offers a close visual and textual analysis of the Śālibhadra style of paintings to reveal the epitomization of mercantile culture directed at a targeted audience of Jains and non–Jains. Chapters two and three focus on two case studies of Jaisalmer and Bikaner respectively, demonstrating the existence and proliferation and circulation of a regional vernacular style existing alongside courtly traditions, both displaying an awareness of the other.
This dissertation underscores the importance of Jain painting in the eighteenth-century world where artists serving Jain communities’ needs created a unique vernacular visual vocabulary that reflected local regional ties, historical consciousness and familiarity with parallel traditions as well. By problematizing the relationship between courtly and vernacular categories and by shedding light on a hitherto understudied group of painted Jain manuscripts, this study contributes to rethinking the larger issue of ‘courtly- vernacular/ regional binary’ in art historical and South Asian studies scholarship while providing evidence for dialogue between the two.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
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