Prof. Dr. Lawrence A. Babb
The research on which this book is based took place at two separate times and places. I spent the summer of 1986 in Ahmedabad doing a preliminary study of Svetambar Jain ritual; I was in Jaipur from August 1990 to May 1991 engaged in a more comprehensive study of Jain life. The Ahmedabad work was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend. My work in Jaipur was supported by a Fulbright senior research fellowship.
I would like to thank Professors D. Malvania and N. Shah of the L. D. Institute of Indology for their assistance and hospitality during my stay in Ahmedabad. I also owe special thanks to Dr. S. S. Jhaveri of Ahmedabad for his wise counsel and gracious efforts to further my understanding of the Jain tradition. I thank colleagues at the University of Rajasthan, especially in the Department of History and Indian Culture, for their generous assistance during my stay in Jaipur. I gained more than I can easily say from the intellectual stimulation of conversations with these colleagues, especially Dr. Mukund Lath. I also thank Arvind Agrawal for his generous assistance in getting me settled and started in Jaipur. I am indebted to too many members of Jaipur's Jain community to mention all of them here. I owe special thanks, however, to Mr. Rajendra Srimal and Mr. Milap Chand Jain for their extremely generous responses to my inquiries. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to my good friend and colleague Surendra Bothara for his companionship and guidance. There were many other good friends who made Jaipur into a second home for Nancy and me. To Daya and Francine Krishna, Mukund and Neerja Lath, Fateh and Indu Singh, Rashmi Patni, and Arun and Vijay Karki we both send our most affectionate thanks.
In response to both oral and written versions of this manuscript (or parts thereof) many colleagues have given me helpful criticism and comment. I am especially indebted to Phyllis Granoff, James Laidlaw, and John Cort. John Cort, in particular, has been an unfailing source of encouragement, an absolutely reliable critic, and a true and good mentor in all things Jain. My thanks indeed. But to all these thanks I must add that any errors of fact and interpretation are mine alone.
My wife Nancy has shared my life in India through good times and bad and has helped me in my work in ways too numerous to mention. To say that I am grateful hardly expresses what I feel, but grateful I am.
Some portions of this book consist of revised and recast material drawn from earlier articles of mine. I am grateful to History of Religions and the University of Chicago Press for permission to use materials from "The Great Choice: Worldly Values in a Jain Ritual Culture" (Babb 1994, © 1994 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved), and also to the editors of Journal of Anthropological Research and The Journal of Asian Studies for permission to use materials, respectively, from "Giving and Giving Up: The Eightfold Worship among Svetambar Murtipujak Jains" (1988) and "Monks and Miracles: Religious Symbols and Images of Origin among Osval Jains" (1993).
