Singing to the Jinas: Jain Laywomen, Mandal Singing, and the Negotiations of Jain Devotion

ISBN-13: 9780195140118 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 288 str.

Mary Whitney Kelting; M. Whitney Kelting; Jain Laywomen

Opis

While Western Jain scholarship has focused on those texts and practices favoring male participation, the Jain community itself relies heavily on lay women's participation for religious education, the performance of key rituals, and the locus of religious knowledge. In this fieldwork-based study, Whitney Kelting attempts to reconcile these women's understanding of Jainism with the religion as presented in the existing scholarship. Jain women, she shows, both accept and rewrite the idealized roles received from religious texts, practices, and social expectation, according to which female religiosity is a symbol of Jain perfection. This volume describes these women's interpretations of their religion, not as folklore or popular religion, but as a theology that recreates Jainism in a form which honors their own participation.

Recenzje

This is a groundbreaking work on the genre of stavan and an important addition to recently published studies of Jain lay practices. It is an engaging, sensitive, and personal account of Svetambara Murtipujak laywomen's expressions of religiosity that is grounded thoroughly in Western academic theory. It should be read by everyone interested in the study of religion in South Asia, women and religion, ritual, devotional literature and devotional movements, performance theory, and musicology.