Between Tradition and Modernity: 19th, 20th and 21st Century Jain Mendicant Leaders

This panel focuses centrally on the seminal role that Jain mendicant leaders of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries have played in translating tradition into modernity, thereby transforming their notions of this binary altogether.  It examines and compares four highly influential 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century Jain Śvetāmbara and Digambara mendicant leaders, and their multiple methods of adapting Jain practices for the modern period which often depend upon an engaged Jain lay community. Despite having outsized influences on the transmission, translation, and adaptation of the Jain tradition into the modern period, no panel to date has taken a microscopic look at the actions and sensibilities of influential Jain mendicant leaders who have reshaped the Jain religious landscape as we know it today. By doing so, we come to appreciate the fluidity of the categories of “tradition” and the “modern,” and understand that both are at play and reconceptualized.

Four scholars from various disciplines and levels of training employ a range of methodologies that ask textual, ethnographic, historical, and exegetical questions about their Jain mendicant subjects and their actions and texts. Often, each of these figures not only engages lay communities, but these lay communities replicate and transform themselves, often through modern technological advancements of preservation and communication. These engagements create new and liminal areas of knowledge-production and lay and monastic interaction non-encoded in the by-laws of scriptural codes of conduct and in the authoritative nature of inherited forms of traditional practice. Offering a working definition of modernity within Jain contexts, the following papers highlight intriguing case studies that situate the exceptional choices these Jain mendicant leaders had to make; the extraordinary circumstances they were placed in; and their own deliberations as gathered by ethnographical, archival, and textual evidences.

The first paper explores a Śvetāmbara Mūrtipūjaka Jain mendicant leader of the late 19th century Jain ācārya Vijayananda Surī, otherwise known by his more popular name Ātmārāmajī Mahārāj (1837-1896). He saw a Jainism challenged by the aniconic sentiments of the Sthānakavāsīs (non-image worshipping Jains) and a contemporary Hindu reformation leader Dayānanda Sarasavatī (1824-1883) of the Ārya Samāj that chipped away at an informed and self-aware Jain identity. The solution for Ātmārāmajī, who presented his views at the World’s Parliament of Religions convened in Chicago in 1893, was to uphold the ideal of icon-worship or mūrti-pūjā as a way to renew a cohesive Jain identity. This paper explores two writings of Ātmārāmajī’s The Chicago Praśnottara (“The Chicago Question and Answer”), which was written in 1892-93, and his Ajñānatimīra-bhāskara (“The Light-maker Amid the Darkness of Ignorance’), as well as his own autobiographical writing and looks specifically at the claims he makes in defense of his arguments and in service of his goals of safeguarding the Jain community in modern times. The second paper extends a discussion of methodological considerations tied to novel forms of knowledge dissemination by looking at the ways in which the Śvetāmbara Terāpanthi leader Ācārya Mahāprajña (1920-2010) adapted his exegetical style for a modern context by employing a “footnote or endnote” styled commentary (ṭippaṇa) to his commentary on the Śvetāmbara canonical text the Ācārāṅga Sūtra. He strongly believed that it was difficult to understand Jaina canonical literature without understanding Vedic, Buddhist and Āyurvedic sources. He was explicit about the sources and constructive method of his modern exegetical practices, divorcing himself from the traditional approach set by the oldest commentaries of the Niryukti, which the poetic compositions of older Jain commentators followed. By employing a commentarial style in a form familiar to modern readers, he not only explained scriptural passages but also communicated his own interpretations derived from a synthesis of Jain and non-Jain sources.

Moving from two mendicant leaders’ attention to the translation of Jain ideals and the preservation of community through them, the last two papers focus on the ways in which two different mendicant leaders (one specifically becoming a Digambara lay leader simulating the career of a Jain mendicant leader) and their followers utilized technology to preserve and disseminate their own teachings and manuscripts. The third paper discusses the role of technology in the dissemination and preservation of the teachings of Kānjī Svāmī (1890 – 1980). His religious career as an independent Jain leader began in the 1930s, delivering daily lectures on adhyātma, and most frequently on the Samayasāra of Kundakunda. He was well-known for his oratory skills and never composed a single written work during his career. This paper will show how his followers certainly exploited the oral nature of Kānjī Svāmī’s teachings to great effect via audio recordings which began from the 1950s onwards using different analogue formats through to the digital age, which contributed to the successful growth of the movement. His own attitudes to such developments will be examined. The use of technology was also one of the defining features of a movement to open the archives by the Jain mendicant leader discussed in the final paper. The fourth paper delineates how the learned Jain scholar-monk Jambūvijaya (1923-2009) opened the archives to the West while simultaneously revamping indigenous understandings of knowledge-preservation through his enormously successful cataloguing, scanning, copying, and digitizing efforts at the Jaisalmer bhaṇḍār located at the Jaislamer Fort in the Rajasthani desert. Under the aegis and tutelage of his guru Punyavijaya, he worked within a lineage of monks who saw knowledge preservation through manuscript cataloguing as an act of devotion as well as a scholarly activity. But, it was Jambūvijaya’s willingness to use modern methods alongside traditional ones and engage local and international scholars that opened up the treasures of the Jaisalmer bhaṇḍār (and other Jain libraries) to the world. In the process, he convinced a lay community, at first hesitant, to support his projects financially and through technological procurements. Despite the several roadblocks placed by the trustees of the Jaisalmer bhaṇḍār and the rigor of training his disciples in multiple languages and working in a desert full of scorpions and snakes, he succeeded in digitizing the manuscripts at Jaisalmer bhaṇḍār and opening them up to the world.

Through highlighting the extraordinary careers of Ātmārāmajī, Ācārya Mahāprajña, Kānjī Svāmī, and Jambūvijaya, this panel also highlights the intensive field work and textual analysis of four female scholars at different phases of training and employment. The panel has additionally been organized to include within its fold a trained Jain mendicant female scholar who has sought to better integrate her work in the academy.