Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c12.s3.t2: 7.3.3 Jainism and other sects

Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c12.s3.t2

Language
English

7.3.3 Jainism and other sects

c12.s3.t2.1

The very abundant and relatively well-documented inscriptions of the Jainas (8.1.3.4), especially in western India of the medieval period, offer a rich fund of information for the study of Jaina religion, ethics, and especially monastic organization. These sources have been extensively utilized in such general historical studies as Asim Kumar Chatterjee's *Comprehensive History of Jainism* and P. B. Desai's *Jainism in South India and Some Jaina Epigraphs*. Jai Prakash Singh's *Aspects of Early Jainism [As Known from the Epigraphs]* attempts a general survey of Jainism from epigraphic sources, but the results are less satisfactory. Paul Dundas' general study of Jaina religion and practice, *The Jains*, also extensively utilizes epigraphic data for chronological and historical corroboration.

c12.s3.t2.2

Inscriptions provide abundant details on the history of Jaina sectarian and monastic history and organization, in the form of the names, lineages, and positions of many Jaina clerics (cf. IC I.170). This data may be profitably used as a corroborative and supplementary source to information provided in the canonical literature. Works addressing Jaina sectarian history that make extensive use of inscriptional information include Shantaram Bhalchandra Deo's *History of Jaina Monachism from Inscriptions and Literature* (especially Part IV, "Jaina Monachism from Epigraphs") and Muni Uttam Kamal Jain's *Jaina Sects and Schools*. As examples of particular epigraphic documents with significant bearing on sectarian history, we may cite an inscription from Pattana (EI 1, 1892, 319–24) which provides a list of twenty-four heads of the Kharatara-gaccha and describes the patronage of that community by the Mughal emperor Akbar, and an old manuscript copy of a lost inscription from Śatruñjaya recording the resolutions of a council of Śvetāmbara monks in A.D. 1242.⁴⁷

c12.s3.t2.3

⁴⁷ See Umakant Premanand Shah, "A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Śvetāmbara Jaina Church or A Documentary Epigraph from the Mount Śatruñjaya," *Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay* 30, 1953, 100–13.

c12.s3.t2.4

Studies of other aspects of Jaina history and practice may also benefit from epigraphic evidence, as, for example, in S. Settar's *Inviting Death*, a study of ritual death among Jains at Śravaṇa-Beḷgoḷa based largely on over one hundred commemorative records.

c12.s3.t2.5

Inscriptions are also sometimes useful in the historical study of minor sects. A. L. Basham, for example, in his classic study of the Ājīvikas,⁴⁸ cites inscriptions attesting to the continued presence of members of this sect in the Tamil country as late as the fourteenth century. Even the heterodox skeptics of the Lokāyata tradition are attested in inscriptions, as noted by B. A. Saletore,⁴⁹ who has traced several references to them in Karnataka inscriptions of the tenth to fifteenth centuries.

c12.s3.t2.6

⁴⁸ *History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion* (London: Luzac, 1951; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981), 187–96.

Linked texts (1)