[DOWNLOAD] "History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect." by The Journal of the American Oriental Society " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect.
- Author : The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Release Date : January 01, 2007
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 181 KB
Description
History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect. By PAUL DUNDAS, Routledge Advances in Jaina Studies. London: ROUTLEDGE, 2007. Pp. xiv + 274. $120. In a paper delivered at the 1978 meeting of the AOS, the late Kendall W. Folkert presciently argued, "the development of the Jain tradition, even including some dimensions of the Svetambara-Digambara division, is best understood by seeing the tradition as a collection of subdivisions, gacchas and the equivalent" (Scripture and Tradition: Collected Essays on the Jains [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993 164). While much of Jain scholarship in vernacular languages in India has taken this level of religiosocial organization as a given, Folkert noted that up until then accounts of the Jains in European languages had paid scant attention to these organizational units. As a result, his presentation in 1978 was highly tentative, if brilliantly predictive. An important aspect of the dramatic growth of Jain studies in Europe and North America in the past two decades has been its increasing focus on "Jainism" at precisely this social level, for it is at the level of the gacchas and their equivalents that Jainism is lived and experienced. To understand Jainism as a social and historical phenomenon (or, perhaps we should say, Jainisms as social and historical phenomena), one must understand the Svetambara Murtipujaka gaccha, and its equivalent units in the other broad divisions of Jain community, as primary units of analysis. While the gaccha is predominantly a mendicant institution, its role in shaping lay organization is significant. Scholars who have heretofore ignored or downplayed the centrality of the gaccha for the past millennium of Jain history will no longer be able to do so after the publication of Dundas's watershed book, in which he provides a detailed analysis of key themes in the history of what has been arguably the most important Murtipujaka gaccha over the past five centuries, the Tupa Gaccha.