7th Jain History Conference on 21-23rd January 2011

7th Jain History Conference will be held on 21, 22 and 23 January 2010 at Walchandnagar, District Pune of Maharashtra. Scholars of Jain History from everywhere will present their research papers in the conference.

Walchandnagar is 125 KM. away from Pune and you can go there by public or private vehicles.

If you are interested in reading your research paper, you are welcome. The research papers must be associated to Jain history. The subjects may be Religious/ Political/ Social history, archeology, art, literature, contribution to Indian culture, regional history, ancient / medieval/ modern history, Prehistory etc. The research papers should be in Marathi or Hindi language.

For more details, please contact any of the following persons:

Pro. Dr. Gajkumar Shah
President, Maharashtra Jain Itihas Parishad: 0 962 302 4372

Shrenik Annadate
Secretary, Maharashtra Jain Itihas Parishad: 0 986 750 8814

Jaykumar Kshirsagar
Chief Secretary of the Conference: 940 313 5921

Preserving Jain Manuscripts

By Mansi Choksi

More than 4,000 Jain manuscripts, some dating back to the ninth century BC, are being immortalised in a digitised encyclopaedia that will be thrown
open to the public early next year.

‘Jainpedia’ is the brainchild of the Institute of Jainology (IoJ), formed in 1983 mainly by the Jain diaspora in Britain. The collection of manuscripts include scriptures from British institutions like the Victoria and Albert Museum, British Library, Bodleian Library and Wellcome Trust.

“Many have beautifully illustrated folios on paper, cloth and palm leaves with a diverse range of subjects related to Jain beliefs, tradition and practices,’’ said Mehool Sanghrajka, IoJ’s director of education.

The manuscripts cover areas like hymns and prayers, accounts of the lives of the founders of Jainism, didactic literature, lexicography, poetics, philosophy, astrology, karma literature, texts on pilgrimage places and on daily rituals.

Most manuscripts have travelled with British officers posted in India who returned after Independence.

“While compiling these catalogues, the Institute realised that the collections were being used only by scholars and learned monks and nuns,’’ said Sanghrajka.

That’s when the institute decided to make the collection accessible to a wider audience. “This question of access was multi-faceted — physical contact with these manuscripts can be difficult as some are rare, many centuries old and fragile. Even if one could get to them, many are in languages that have not been spoken for a millennia and more. And, if one could perchance read the script, the contents are themselves difficult without an understanding of Jain philosophy, history and culture,’’ he says.

To make them more intelligible, the digitised images will be contextualized with commentaries from modern scholars, audio and video material and translations of the original texts apart from material for schools and young people.

Even Jain elders and members of Jain trusts in Mumbai have given ‘Jainpedia’ the thumbs-up. “The effort taken by the Jain community in Britain will reinforce our own efforts of reaching out to youngsters,’’ says Puspasen Panachand Zaveri, who is a trustee of many Jain trusts including Chadraprabhu Derasar.
Sanghrajka adds that independent research had shown that over 3 lakh people would benefit from the project.

“In particular, school children in England, where the institute has brought Jainism into the English National Curriculum will benefit.” A series of lectures is being planned by the institute to create awareness about the website in Mumbai.

Jaina treasure trove in Mankulam village

CHENNAI: The ruins of two Jaina prayer halls (Chaitya grahas), belonging to the Tamil Sangam age and estimated to be about 2,200 years old, have been excavated atop a hill near Mankulam village, about 20 km from Madurai, Tamil Nadu. The ruins are adjacent to two of the five caves that have the earliest Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions in Tamil Nadu. The caves have several beds hewn out of the rock-floor, where the Jaina monks rested.

The Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department excavated the ruins of the prayer halls in 2007. The excavation yielded large-sized bricks, grooved tiles with holes, black and red potsherds and L-shaped iron nails. The Department has published a book on this excavation.

V. Vedachalam, retired senior epigraphist, Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department, estimated that these halls were “the earliest Jaina brick structures in Tamil Nadu.” He asserted, “No brick structure of this kind has been found in any Jaina site in Tamil Nadu.” The monks, who lived in the nearby caves, must have prayed in these chaitya grahas, which could have had an auspicious symbol or a cult object, he said.

The foundation and walls of the halls were built of bricks, which measured 35 cm x 17 cm x 6 cm. The roof was made of wooden rafters with grooved tiles that were held in place on the rafters by the L-shaped iron nails driven through the tiles.

These structures were similar to those found at the Udayagiri and Khandagiri hills, near Bhubaneswar, Orissa, which were important Jaina centres, said Dr. Vedachalam.

In 1882, Robert Sewell, civil servant and antiquarian, first noticed a few inscriptions on the brow of the caves on the Mankulam hill, near Meenakshipuram. Epigraphists V. Venkayya and H. Krishna Sastry tried to read them. Attempts to decipher them bore no fruit until K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, who pioneered the reading of the Tamil-Brahmi script, recognised them as having been inscribed in Brahmi. He concluded, in 1924, that the script’s language was Tamil. Others who contributed to the decipherment of the Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions found in Tamil Nadu included T.N. Subrahmanian, Iravatham Mahadevan, Dr. R. Nagaswamy and Dr. Y. Subbarayalu.

On the Mankulam hill, there are five caves, with six Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions in four of them. They belong to the 2nd century B.C. The long inscription found on the brow of the rock, close to the first Jaina prayer hall, gives details of how the Pandya king Nedunchezhiyan was instrumental in sculpting the beds in the cave as “dhammam” for the chief Jaina monk “Kani Nandan.” Another inscription is about “Sadikan,” father of Nedunchezhiyan’s brother-in-law, sculpting the beds for Kani Nandan.

Dr. Vedachalam said: “Mankulam was a great Jaina centre. It must have been the largest Jaina centre in Tamil Nadu during the Sangam age. The existence of the chaitya grahas, Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and the Jaina beds [together in one place] are of national importance.”

Today, the Jaina beds have been desecrated with graffiti incised on them or painted in different colours.