Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I INTRODUCTION
- II DISCOURSE, CONDITIONS AND DYNAMICS OF TRADITION IN SOUTH ASIA
- III HOW TO PRODUCE, CONSTRUCT AND LEGITIMATE A TRADITION
- IV EXPERIENCING BOUNDARIES WITHIN TRADITION: THE CASE OF THE SANSKRIT GRAMMARIANS
- V VIOLATING TRADITION AND ITS BOUNDARIES
- VI THINKING ABOUT TRADITIONS IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY
- When Two Strong Men Stand Face to Face. The Indologist, the Pandit and the Re-Making of the Jaina Scholarly Tradition
- Evaluation or Dialogue? A Brief Reflection on the Understanding of the Indian Tradition of Debate
When Two Strong Men Stand Face to Face. The Indologist, the Pandit and the Re-Making of the Jaina Scholarly Tradition
from VI - THINKING ABOUT TRADITIONS IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I INTRODUCTION
- II DISCOURSE, CONDITIONS AND DYNAMICS OF TRADITION IN SOUTH ASIA
- III HOW TO PRODUCE, CONSTRUCT AND LEGITIMATE A TRADITION
- IV EXPERIENCING BOUNDARIES WITHIN TRADITION: THE CASE OF THE SANSKRIT GRAMMARIANS
- V VIOLATING TRADITION AND ITS BOUNDARIES
- VI THINKING ABOUT TRADITIONS IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY
- When Two Strong Men Stand Face to Face. The Indologist, the Pandit and the Re-Making of the Jaina Scholarly Tradition
- Evaluation or Dialogue? A Brief Reflection on the Understanding of the Indian Tradition of Debate
Summary
‘But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!’
(Kipling 1990: 187)Jainism is paradigmatic of one variant in the Orientalist approach to Indian traditions, whereby that tradition is neglected both as an object of research and in its reception. In addressing the question of why this should be the case with regard to Jainism it might be necessary to extensively analyse the emergence of certain prejudices which mark the lines along which the Jaina tradition has been represented in western Indological discourse, i.e. its ‘dependence on Buddhism’, the ‘rejection of the body’, its ‘hybridity’ and its ‘minority status’ to name a few. One of the most striking examples of the Orientalist perception of Jaina tradition is Louis Renou's famous reference to it as “Buddhism's darker reflection” (Renou 1953: 111). In this conception of 1953 of Renou's, 70 years after Albrecht Weber's account of the literature of the Jainas—epochal in being the first such work of its kind—, we can identify three elements pertaining to the early conceptions of Jainism: its dependence on Buddhism, its extreme asceticism which was perceived negatively and, finally, the view that it was both baffling and meaningless. More modestly, Arthur Llewlleyn Basham in his book about the Ājīvikas, evaluated the significance of research on Jainism, inappropriately as it happens, in terms of the critical reception of Buddhism, saying “The history of Jainism, though it has much of interest to the specialist, is less spectacular than that of Buddhism” (Basham 1951: 261).
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- Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2011