The Prince Of Wales Vistis JAINPEDIA At The Victoria And Albert Museum

Jain Community celebrates launch of JAINpedia exhibitions and website

 

London 18^th November 2010

The Institute of Jainology (“IoJ”) was delighted to receive His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London to view the JAINpedia exhibition and see the JAINpedia online digital resources.

The IoJ is an international organisation established in 1983. In 1990 the presentation of the ‘Jain Declaration on Nature’ to H R H Prince Philip, repositioned Jainism as the eight faith of the world and marked its entry to the World Wide Fund for Nature. The JAINpedia project created by the IoJ will be a first for Jain heritage as there is no other online public resource that has worked with the key holders of Jain artefacts in the UK or worldwide. The project now in its third year has exhibitions running at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, and still to come at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

The event yesterday began with The Prince being greeted by Mr Paul Ruddock, Chairman of the V&A, and Mr Nemu Chandaria, Deputy Chairman of the IoJ and then introduced to the Directors of the IoJ and key staff at the V&A.

Mr Nemu Chandaria commented, “the Jain community is grateful to His Royal Highness for visiting the JAINpedia exhibition. His warmth and interest in the project and the Jain community has made this a very special day for us.”

The Prince was guided through the V&A exhibition by curator Nick Barnard and JAINpedia expert Prof. Nalini Balbir of the University of Paris. He spent several moments discussing Jain cosmology and 15^th century manuscripts featuring the lives of the Jain teachers. His Royal Highness was then shown how the manuscripts are made available through the JAINpedia site.

Over 100 members of the Jain community were invited to meet His Royal Highness during the visit as well as stakeholders from the British Library, the Wellcome Trust and the Bodleian Library. The event concluded with speeches from Beth McKillop, Deputy Director of the V&A, Mehool Sanghrajka Director of the IoJ and the JAINpedia Project and finally by Wesley Kerr, Chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund London Committee, who are supporting the JAINpedia project.

To find out more about the project please visit http://www.jainpedia.org/ or contact the JAINpedia team on bansri.mehta@jainpedia.org  020 8236100.

The event with The Prince of Wales on the 18th November at the Victoria and Albert Museum was photographed and videoed.  Any media who wish to have a copy of the pictures and/or video need to contact Bansri Mehta on 020 8236 1001.

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.