Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation traces how and why Jain authors at different points in history rewrote the story of Rāma and situates these texts within larger frameworks of South Asian religious history and literature.
The book argues that the plot, characters, and the very history of Jain Rāma composition itself served as a continual font of inspiration for authors to create and express novel visions of moral personhood. In making this argument, the book examines three versions of the Rāma story composed by two authors, separated in time and space by over 800 years and thousands of miles. The first is Raviṣeṇa, who composed the Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa (“The Deeds of Padma”), and the second is Brahma Jinadāsa, author of both a Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa and a vernacular (bhāṣā) version of the story titled Rām Rās (“The Story of Rām”). While the three compositions narrate the same basic story and work to shape ethical subjects, they do so in different ways and with different visions of what a moral person actually is. A close comparative reading focused on the differences between these three texts reveals the diverse visions of moral personhood held by Jains in premodernity and demonstrates the innovative narrative strategies authors utilized in order to actualize those visions.
The book is thus a valuable contribution to the fields of Jain studies and religion and literature in premodern South Asia.
By:
Gregory M. Clines
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9780367765736
ISBN 10: 036776573X
Series: Routledge Advances in Jaina Studies
Pages: 168
Publication Date: 29 January 2024
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration List of Maps and Figures 1 Introduction: Jains in Rāmāyaṇa Studies and Rāmāyaṇas in Jain Studies PART I 2 Grief, Peace, and Moral Personhood in Raviṣeṇa’s Padmapurāṇa PART II 3 Creating Clarity: Jinadāsa Rewrites Raviṣeṇa 4 Recognizing Enemies, Internal and External: Exemplarity and the Moral Vision of Jinadāsa’s Padmapurāṇa PART III 5 From Padma to Rām: Language and Performance in Jinadāsa’s Rām Rās 6 Performance, Audience, and Quotidian Ethics in the Rām Rās 7 Concluding Thoughts Appendix Index
Gregory M. Clines is Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity University, USA. His research focuses on early modern Digambara Jainism and Jain Rāmāyaṇa literature.
Reviews for Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation
"""[...] Gregory M. Clines’ monograph, Jain Ramayana Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation, provides a much-needed intervention in the study of Rāmāyaṇas. There, Clines aims to recast Jain Rāmāyaṇas as an internally diverse corpus of narratives. Each retelling responds to earlier Jain versions of the tale, as well as to a network of contemporaneous discourses. Such an argument could, of course, be proven in various ways. But given that Jainism has been misread as a religion concomitant with nonviolence and renunciation, Clines draws out the distinct visions of moral behaviour that each Jain Rāmāyaṇa constructs. He argues that each Jain retelling expresses a range of ethical values that include, but go beyond, prescriptions of nonviolent and nonattached action voiced by Jain doctrinal and commentarial texts. [...] a generative book that opens new directions for Jain Rāmāyaṇa studies."" - Seema K. Chauhan, University of Oxford, UK, Reading Religion"
