The panel seeks to extend the scholarly discussion on lay-authored Jain literature from diverse approaches, encompassing distinct geographical and lingual affiliations. Including lay Jain authors and their literary productions from both Śvetāmbara and Digambara traditions, this panel aims at bringing out understudied contributions individual lay Jain authors writing in the languages Hindi, Gujarati, and English have made to the religious and literary traditions of Jains. This panel seeks to indicate some directions that lay-authored literature could offer towards identifying and exploring engagement with phenomena from neo-orthodoxy to philosophy and adoration, devotion to esoteric practice and internal asceticism. The first paper will focus on a neo-orthodox diasporic text. The second paper will discuss how esoteric is de-marginalized through creation of a literary category of adoration. The third paper addresses literature production on internal asceticism in the context of exploring its philosophical significance.
On the basis of fieldwork in the English city of Leicester, Banks (1991) identifies three tendencies within Jain faith: orthodoxy, heterodoxy and neo-orthodoxy, which “claims for itself the status of a science” (252). I will discuss the British Jain statistician K.V. Mardia’s book The Scientific Foundations of Jainism (1990) as a distinctively neo-orthodox work. Mardia presents Jain doctrine in scientific terms, e.g. labelling the binding of karma by the soul “karmic fusion”, explained as the soul’s absorption of subatomic karmons. Although himself a Śvetāmbara, he adopts a typically neo-orthodox non-sectarian position. Diasporic Jain lay communities are largely cut off from regular contact with fully initiated ascetics, making developments in the diaspora of particular interest for scholars on the Jain laity. Of Banks’ three tendencies, neo-orthodoxy has least interest in ascetics. I will add to scholarly understanding of this distinctively laical category through analysis of a neo-orthodox diasporic text.
The Jain lay author, Paṇḍit Daulatrām (VS1855-1923/1798-1866 CE) belonged to Pallivāl Jain Society. By relying on my reading abilities of old Hindi and an understanding of the Adhyātma movement in the Digambara Jain tradition, I will discuss the philosophical and literary significances of Daulatrām’s works in the Jain tradition. Even if the number of his available works is just two, what does Daulatrām’s works distinct from the other similar works that are available in Jain literary history claimed by Veersagar Jain (2000) that there exist other similar types of works but only Chahaḍhālā by Daulatrām became popular among the Jain community in especially Hindi speaking regions. The second desideratum to explore is the number of Jain lay authors in the Digambara Jainism. The reason for the growing numbers of lay authors and the demise of Digambara monks during the period of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal will be touched upon.
Exploring lay Jain author, Dhīrajalāl Ṭokaraśī Śāh’s (b.1906) two volumes, Śrī Pārśvapadmāvatī *Ārādhanā* (“Adoration of Pārśvapadmāvatī”) and Padmāvatī Prasanna (“Padmāvatī, who is Gratified”), published in the year 1972 and 2001, respectively, this paper aims at identifying their contributions towards two parallel developments: introduction of a distinct category, *“ārādhanā”* literature and establishing Jain goddess Padmāvatī’s efficacious place in Jain tradition. In turn, both developments correspond to each other, which, I argue, results in blurring the boundaries between devotion, Jain *mantravāda*, spiritual endeavors, and theological principles. More particularly, by investigating the approach and content of Śāh’s volumes, I will discuss how lay-authored Jain literature in the Gujarati language emerge as partakers of a broader Jain literary and religious culture by de-marginalizing those religious things that have been seen as peripheral.