Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India"There is no doubt that the wealth of new data and ideas offered in this exquisite book provides the deepest insights yet into the contemporary religious world of Jain laity. It will serve for some time as a paradigmatic monograph for future empirical studies of Jain religious life." --Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies "Jains in the World is a significant and welcome ethnography of contemporary Jains in western India by the most prominent scholar of Jainism in North America. This book is a must for scholars of South Asian religions and will provide scholars of Hindu traditions fine grounding both in a central dialectic of Jain thought and in contemporary Jain praxis." --International Journal of Hindu Studies "A valuable addition to the literature on Jainism as a living faith. Since it has the additional merits of being clearly written, attractively illustrated, and free of unnecessary theoretical baggage, it should serve as a good introduction to this tradition for college students." --Journal of the American Oriental Society "A must-read for understanding, by and large, the ritual world of the Jains. He has succeeded in proving that the concept of well-being is as central to the Jains' moral universe as their more entrenched pursuit of the goal of liberation of soul from karmic bondage."--History of Religions "An essential read for students and scholars of Jainism. . . . it identifies and defines a realm of value in Jainism strongly alluded to by recent scholarship, but which, until now, had not been explicitly stated. For this reason Jains in the World will doubtless prove to be a fundamental turning point in the development of Jaina studies."-- The Journal of Religion 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. |
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Common terms and phrases
Acarya actions Ahmedabad ascetic asceticism attain auspicious Bhinmal Bhojak Bombay Brahmans caitya'vandan caste central shrine century chapter circumambulates comasu congregation contemporary correct faith Cort deity Digambar discussion dorian dyambil eating fast festival Ghantakarn goddess Gujarat guru guru'vandan Hemacandra Hindu holy hymn important interaction Jain temples Jain tradition Jainism Jaipur Jina Jina image Kalpa Sutra karma karmic Kartak Khartar Gacch Laidlaw laity Laksmi lamp layperson living Lord Mahavir mangal mantra mendicant mendicant's moksa-marg Muni murti Murtipujak Jains neighborhood non-Jain observed offerings one's Parsvanath Paryusan Patan Patan Jains path to liberation perform practice praise Prakrit pratikraman puja pujaris pujd punya realm rebirth recitation religious renunciation rite ritual S/he sadhu sadhvls Sagar samayik samuday sandalwood sangh Sanskrit sddhu sermon Shatrunjay soul spiritual SthanakvasI Stotra Svetambar symbols Tapa Gacch Terapanthis texts translation understanding updiray vandan Vaniya verse vows wealth wellbeing worldly worship yatis
Popular passages
Page 187 - And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated net-work of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
Page 187 - I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, color of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. — And I shall say: "games
Page 24 - There is a wisdom which knows when to go and when to return, what is to be done and what is not to be done, what is fear and what is courage, what is bondage and what is liberation - that is pure wisdom.
Page 10 - Ideologies like to draw rigid boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not, between self and non-self, truth and falsity, sense and nonsense, reason and madness, central and marginal, surface and depth.
Page 5 - He emphasized that human knowledge is given in society as an a priori to individual experience, providing the latter with its order of meaning. This order, although it is relative to a particular socio-historical situation, appears to the individual as the natural way of looking at the world.
Page 10 - The notion of ideology appears to me to be difficult to make use of, for three reasons. The first is that, like it or not, it always stands in virtual opposition to something else which is supposed to count as truth.
Page 11 - In our case, in every concrete whole we find the formal principle at work, but we also find something else, a raw material which it orders and logically encompasses but which it does not explain, at least not immediately and for us. This is where we find the equivalent of what we call relations of force, political and economic phenomena, power, territory, property, etc. Those data which we can recover thanks to the notions we have of them in our own ideology may be called the (comparative) concomitants...
Page 11 - Methodologically, the initial postulate is that the ideology is central with respect to the social reality as a whole (man acts consciously and we have direct access to the conscious aspect of his action).
Page 11 - But ideology is not everything. Any concrete, localized, whole, when actually observed, is found to be decisively oriented by its ideology, and also to extend far beyond it.
Page 108 - inauspiciousness and pap, 'evil,' are thought to be generated not only at death but in most life processes. Birth, marriage, death, harvests, the building of a house, and very many occasions during the calendrical cycles of the week, the lunar month, and the year are thought to generate inauspiciousness (but not necessarily 'impurity') that must be removed and given away in dan if well-being and auspiciousness are to be achieved and maintained.
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India |
| Author | John E. Cort |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 2001 |
| ISBN | 0198030371, 9780198030379 |
| Length | 288 pages |
| Subjects | › Religion / Jainism |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |