The renowned German Association of Research (Emmy-Noether-Programm der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft) has granted the means to start a research project on Jainism in Karnataka at the University of Heidelberg.
The project will be started in January 2005 and is headed by Dr. Julia Hegewald, formerly University of Oxford.
It aims to detect the high influence and to analyse the reasons of the abrupt disappearance of Jain culture in Karnataka between the 5th and the early 12th century.
During her research studies in India on ‘Water Architecture in South Asia’ Dr. Hegewald noticed many ancient Jain temples in India and started to collect data for documentation, because she did not find any mentioning in publications why the culture had disappeared. By this fact her attention was drawn to Jainism.
The research group will consist of five more members and plans to present their results on conferences in India to open it for the public there.
The young scholar feels very honoured by the fact to continue her work on the propagators of Ahimsa in an own research group: ‘ I think all of us can learn from Jainism where the concentration lays on finding a sense of life in non-violence and inner peace. This would be for the benefit of all of us, not only at Christmas time…’