Jaina Studies at the American Academy of Religion Conference

Centre of Jaina Studies Newsletter: SOAS - University of London

Jaina Studies was the focus of two academic panels at the 2007 American Academy of Religion (AAR) con­ference held in November in San Diego. The 'Religion in South Asia' section of the AAR had a panel devoted specifically to Jaina Studies. It featured papers from Jim Hastings, Whitney Kelting, Sherry Fohr, Stephen Quin- lan and Anne Vallely. The panel, organized by Anne Val- lely, and entitled: 'Transcending Dualities and Dialectics: Capturing Jain Identities' challenged the dualistic con­ceptual framework that has profoundly influenced most scholarly works on Jainism in the modern period. The persistent scholarly bias toward studies of Jain asceticism has had the effect of setting renunciation up as something sharply delineated from lay life, and highly idiosyncratic. The impetus motivating the panel was the desire to ex­plore those practices, institutions and discourses that ei­ther completely transcend the renouncer/householder di­chotomy or that cannot, without considerable difficulty, be reduced to it. The latter is important: the dichotomy between being "in" and "out of' the world remains a very powerful rhetorical tool within Jainism, and the of­ten labyrinthine efforts to make all things fit the binary mode can be a fascinating insight into a cultural universe largely constructed around dualism. The panel set up the classificatory householder/renouncer dyad as its central problematic, and posed the question of whether or not it is an exhaustive or even particularly instructive frame­work for understanding the lived practices of Jains.

The paper by Stephen Quinlan (University of Ottawa) took the ubiquitous nature of astrology within Jainism as its starting point, and explored the similarities and dif­ferences in the ways in which charts of horoscopy are employed among lay and renouncer Jains. Interest in jyotis-śāstra (astrology) is omnipresent within Jainism, and makes irrelevant the renouncer/householder status of its seekers. The importance of astrology is well known among lay communities who consult astrological charts before settling on marriage partners, wedding dates, or business endeavours etc. But attention to astrology is pursued with considerable vigor among the mendicant community as well.

The ritual of self-mortification, known as sallekhanā, is an institution that cuts across the lay-ascetic divide in interesting ways. As the ultimate, and seemingly most radical, expression of world renunciation, it is commonly assumed to be the exclusive province of the renounc- ers. And yet, proportionally, sallekhanā is undertaken at least as regularly among lay Jains as it is among the renouncers. Anne Vallely's paper (University of Ottawa) argued that the vow of sallekhanā can be viewed as an end-of-life strategy that can provide narrative coherence and pious closure on a life. As a vow that can be adopted years before one's death, it is often undertaken to signal a gradual withdrawal from worldly attachment. Hailed as a heroic act, it serves as a testimony of the virtuous life and in so doing establishes that life as a purposeful and exemplary one. Its ability to provide life with a sanctified telos may make it more important vow for householders than for ascetics whose entire lives were oriented along the moksa mārga.

Kaleidoscopic view of Mahatma Gandhi statue at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, California. Image: Janet Leigh Foster

The Digambara Jain bhattāraka system is perhaps the best example of a Jain institution which defies bi­nary categorization as its very raison d'etre is to serve an intermediary role between that of householder and as­cetic. While bhattārakas do take vows of celibacy and non-possession, they maintain other attributes closer to those of prosperous householders. Unlike Digambara ascetics, they are clothed, can travel in vehicles, do not wander, and above all often control enormous assets and large amounts of property. Yet, like Digambara ascetics, bhattārakas are well versed in Jain tenets and give spir­itual instruction to lay adherents. Their betwixt-and-be- tween status was the focus of a fascinating paper by Jim Hastings (University of North Carolina).

M. Whitney Kelting (Northeastern University) ex­amined the practice of women's fasting as a commonly shared body-practice and discourse among lay and re- nouncer women. Jain women understand their acts - es­pecially those associated with the performance of fasts - as constitutive of their future bodies. Jain karma theory posits a direct and material relationship between one's acts and the materialization of one's body. Kelting dem­onstrated that this acceptance of the performative nature of the body among Jains allows us to examine the ways that Jain women negotiate the seemingly contradictory discourses of wife-hood and nun-hood into bodies con­stitutive of both. Fasting is an exemplary practice for all Jain women and one that allows individuals to negotiate the shifting terrain between that of wife and renouncer.

Finally, Sherry Fohr (Converse College) explored how, in Jainism, the term satī, virtuous woman, has come to refer to both faithful wives and female renouncers, and how both are the heroines of the Jain sati-narratives. Most of these stories are about married women who re­main faithful to their husbands and eventually renounce the world to become nuns. While Śvetāmbara and Dig- ambara nuns' interpretations of these narratives empha­size these satis' marital fidelity as wives above all else, they also underscore the connection to the nuns' own practice of celibacy. The dialectic between householder and renouncer within Jainism is supplanted by continuity within these narratives about women and nuns' interpre­tations of them.

In addition to the Religion of South Asia panel devoted to Jainism, the AAR's ' Sacred Space in Asia' panel also featured a paper on Jainism, by Anne Vallely. Entitled 'Sacred Space, Sacred Absence and the Birth of God', it argued that an understanding of sacred space in Jain­ism requires us to see space as simultaneously perilous and propitious, and for an understanding of sacredness rooted in the idea of an absence, rather than presence; an absence that denotes release from worldly existence.

In recent years, the field of Jain Studies has become gradually more visible at the professional conferences for the study of religion in North America. It can only be hoped that this trend continues, and that a permanent forum for the presentation of academic studies on Jain- ism will be established in the American Academy of Re­ligion.

Anne Vallely is assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her re­search interests fall within the Anthropology of Religion, and focus on the Jain religious and cultural tradition in India, as well as on the transnational Jain community outside of India.