Programme
Christoph Emmrich
Assistant Professor
Department of Historical Studies
University of Toronto
E/ christoph.emmrich@utoronto.ca
The Thread between the Pages. Traces of Worship and Learning in the Kanchipuram Jain Community
Though today only one of the fabled 83 temples of Jina Kanchi is left standing, it is surprising to learn that allegedly there are still about 300 practicing laypeople with lineages going back to the times of the former centre of Tamil Jain worship and learning. How do the Jains of Kanchi talk about their own glorious past with its narrative being dyed by the blood of the Saiva histories claiming their persecution? How do they strike the balance between representation and discreteness, between trying to live as a community while being concerned about the consequences of being perceived? What contemporary personas and performances have been prompted by the anxieties of being too brahmanical, or not Tamil enough? And, between all this, what happened to Jain scholarship in Kanchi, deprived of its institutions: wiped out and forgotten? Answers to this may be found in the ongoing local discussions surrounding places, roles and agents of worship and by the ways textual traditions here are being transmitted in the absence of a monastic community.
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Prof. Emmrich is interested in the relationship of shared practices and
competing claims in the history of Buddhist and Jaina thought and ritual within
South Asian societies such as those of the Buddhist Newars of the Kathmandu
Valley and the Digambaras of Tamil Nadu. Currently, he is working on
pre-marriage rituals involving Newar girls and the transmission of ritual
knowledge among Digambara practitioners. His publications in Jaina Studies
include "'When Two Strong Men Stand Face to Face'. The Indologist, the Pandit
and the Re-Making of the Jaina Scholarly Tradition", in Boundaries, Dynamics
and Construction of Tradition in South Asia (2005), "How Many Times? Monism
or Pluralism in Early Jaina Temporal Description", Aspects of Jainism
(2003); "'Some Remarks on the Terminological Construction of kala in Kundakunda'
Vasantagauravam", Essays in Jainism Felicitating Professor M. D. Vasantha
Raj of Mysore on his Seventy-fifth Birthday (2001).