Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation

ISBN-13: 9780367762919 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022 / 168 str.

Gregory M. Clines

Opis

This book 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 is a valuable contribution to the fields of Jain studies and religion and literature in premodern South Asia.

Recenzje

"[...] Gregory M. Clines' monograph, Jain Ramayana Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation, provides a much-needed intervention in the study of Ramayanas. There, Clines aims to recast Jain Ramayanas 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 Ramayana 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 Ramayana studies." - Seema K. Chauhan, University of Oxford, UK, Reading Religion

O autorze

Gregory M. Clines is Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity University, USA. His research focuses on early modern Digambara Jainism and Jain Rāmāyaṇa literature.