Author: John E Cort
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 267
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195653602
Description
Shedding new light on Jainism and highlighting the interaction between formal religious ideology and implicitly enunciated values, this highly original fieldwork-based study presents a rounded portrait of the religion as it is practiced today.
This book presents a detailed fieldwork-based study of the ancient Indian religion of Jainism. Drawing on field research in northern Gujarat and on the study of both ancient Sanskrit and Prakrit and modern vernacular Jain religious literature, John Cort provides a rounded portrait of the religion as it is practiced today.
Cort begins by looking at the institutional structures that make up Jain society and by examining the major facets of Jain practice. Separate chapters present descriptions of temple worship and the connected Jain understandings of divinity, interaction between laity and monks and nuns, ascetic and dietary practices, and the many festivals and observances that make up the Jain calendar year.
The portrait of the Jains that emerges in this book is significantly different from those found in earlier text-based studies that failed to portray the lived experiences of Jainism. Cort’s own interpretation of Jainism focuses on a distinction between two realms and values. One is the clearly defined religious ideology that is at the core of mendicant practice and ideal lay practice, and whose goal is liberation. The other, less clearly delineated because it stems from everyday ethics and religious imagination, is the realm of well-being. Cort demonstrates that this informal, unarticulated concept is the necessary complement to the formal ideology and is no less authentically Jain.
Shedding new light on Jainism and highlighting the interaction between formal religious ideology and implicitly enunciated values, this highly original study will be of enormous value to both scholars and students in the fields of religious and cultural studies.
Contents
Note on Language, Transliteration, and Names
Hymn to Pancasar Parsvanath
Introduction: On the Occasion of the Blessed Installation of the Lord
The Ideology of the Path to Liberation
Jains and Jainism in Patan
Going to the Temple: How to worship God
Gifting and Grace: Patterns of Lay-Mendicant Interaction
Holy Asceticism
Remembrance and Celebration: The Jain Religious Year
Ideologies and Realms of Value
Hymn to Pancasar Parsvanath
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index