Ānanda, the paradigmatic Jain layman who is the subject of the first section of the Śvetāmbara canonical text the Upāsakadaśāḥ, is characterised by his extreme wealth or rather by his possession of money in the form of gold pieces: 120 million of them to be exact. Ānanda’s possession of such a large amount of money makes his eventual renunciation all the more impressive. In Jainism there is a symbiosis between wealth and renunciation. This paper seeks to explore this symbiosis in the light of theoretical approaches to the sociology of money. The forms of money are protean; they range from Ānanda’s tangible money in the shape of coins with a positive intrinsic value to today’s largely invisible money, which depends on a negative concept, debt, for its value. The paper will attempt to survey the interface between Jain ethical values and money in its various forms.
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Contributions to Jaina Studies: Jaina Schools & Sects
Peter Flügel
The twelve articles assembled in this first volume of the author’s Collected Papers in Jaina Studies, written in English, were published as journal articles and book chapters between 1996 and 2016. They are reproduced here in almost identical form, though an attempt was made to eliminate typographical errors and minor mistakes. Three articles, chapters 2, 6, and 11, which, on request, were first published without the use of diacritical marks, have been changed back to their original format. In a few cases, the biographical data of recently deceased individuals were updated.
The articles address aspects of the history, doctrine, organisation, and ways of life in Jaina mendicant orders, sects and schools, following an overview of the contemporary monastic traditions. The majority are outcomes of a long-term research project, covering a period of over 30 years, on the aniconic or amūrtipūjaka Śvetāmbara Jaina traditions, which had been neglected by modern scholarship and, with the notable exception of the Terāpanth and the Śramaṇa Saṃgha, are still almost unknown even in India itself. Two articles pertain to the Akrama Vijñāna Mārga, a new syncretistic religious movement, combining Sāṃkhya ontology with Jaina soteriology.
Askese und Devotion: Das Rituelle System der Śvetāmbara Terāpanth Jaina (Alt- und Neuindische Studien 56,1-2)
Peter Flügel
The two-part monograph Asceticism and Devotion: The Ritual System of the Terāpanth Śvetāmbara Jaina, based on fieldwork and archival research mainly conducted in Rajasthan in 1992-93, describes history, philosophy, organisation, ritual system, and influence of a ‘protestant’ Jaina mendicant order that doctrinally rejects image-veneration and from 1949 onward pursued a modernist agenda. Jainism as a lived religion is analysed here for the first time as a dynamic social system with regard to an individual Jaina sect that self-referentially reproduces itself through selective networks of actions and communications connecting itinerant mendicants and their devotees. The work is both an ethnography and a contribution to the comparative sociology of knowledge. The empirical investigation focuses on the documentation and historical contextualisation of religious practices, the overall aim of the study is a better theoretical understanding of the effects of social forces on the structure of thought by way of an exemplary investigation of current processes of change and modernisation in the Jaina tradition.
The aim of the SOAS Centre of Jaina Studies (COJS) is to promote the study of Jaina religion and culture by providing an interdisciplinary platform for academic research, teaching and publication in the field of Jaina Studies.
The Centre promotes the following activities:
Research projects in Jaina Studies.
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Public lectures in Jaina Studies by leading scholars.
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Courses on Jainism, and postgraduate research in Jaina Studies at SOAS.
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