Session 27: Constructing Traditions: Ideal Communities and Temples in Modern Rajasthan

Organizer and Chair: John E. Cort, Denison University

Discussant: Cynthia Talbot, University of Texas, Austin

The three presenters conducted a joint research project entitled "Continuities of Community Patronage: Pilgrimage Temples of Western India" from 1996 through 1998. The project started with the material evidence of four medieval temples in the Marwar region of Western India that are still active today: Ranchodray Vishnu in Khed (near Balotra), Sachchiya Mata and Mahavir Jina in Osian, and Dadhimati Mata in Goth-Manglod (near Nagaur). Each temple has had extended (but not necessarily constant) connections with specific communities—defined in terms of both geography and caste—of patronage and worship. Our research, therefore, involved us as much in these social groups as in the temples themselves. The three papers in this panel investigate seemingly overlapping processes of "reform" and "renovation" in the twentieth century, as temples, castes, and mendicant lineages all were "restored" to perceived ideal forms.

Constructing a Temple

Michael W. Meister, University of Pennsylvania

All four temples have undergone extensive renovation and even reconstruction in the twentieth century. We have the most thorough documentation for this process for the two temples in Osian. Early twentieth-century restorations were very much local undertakings, and based on only partially articulated local Marwari conceptions of what a pilgrimage temple (tirtha) is. The twentieth century saw increased interaction among different Jain communities throughout western India, and so the renovation work on the Jain temple at Osian came under the control of the powerful Anandji Kalyanji trust of Ahmedabad, which has also overseen renovations at Shatrunjay, Girnar, Abu, and Ranakpur. The shilpins (architectural craftsmen) of Anandji Kalyanji have been influenced by the rediscovery of the classical Chaulukya temple tradition by several traditionally-trained shilpin-scholars, in particular Prabhashankar Oghadbhai Sompura. At the same time, the renovations evince post-Chaulukya construction techniques. These renovations and reconstructions raise the question of what models of a "traditional" temple the modern renovators and restorers have been using in their work; in other words, what the renovators (patrons, architects both traditional and modern, government officials, craftsmen) have understood that a pilgrimage temple should be in terms of its physical form. These ideal models have altered over the course of the twentieth century, as part of a broader process of the construction of a historical tradition of the ideal temple in western India.

Constructing a Brahman Caste

Lawrence A. Babb, Amherst College

The goddess Dadhimati Mata, whose temple is at Goth-Manglod, is the "caste goddess" of the Dahima Brahmans of Rajasthan. (She is also the caste and/or place goddess of other social groups as well.) The exact nature of this relationship over time is not fully clear, as it obviously has undergone changes. The current Dahima understanding of their relationship with Dadhimati crystallize in the early twentieth century as part of two parallel processes, one whereby the Dahimas gradually wrested control of the temple from local non-Dahima control, and the other whereby Dahima ideologues determined the history and boundaries of the Dahima caste. This was part of a broader pan-Indian movement of "caste reform," in response to various social and material causes such as the British census, and increased mobility and communications due to capitalism and modernity. In part these caste reform movements aimed at "cleansing" the castes of social practices frowned upon by social reformers; but they also aimed at cleansing the castes of practices that went against a perceived ideal norm of what a caste should be. In the case of the Dahimas, this involved the superimposition onto extant Dahima marriage and kinship practices of an idealized Brahmanical structure of various types of exogamous and endogamous lineages, all aimed at making the Dahimas into an ideal Brahman caste.

Constructing a Jain Mendicant Lineage

John E. Cort, Denison University

The two temples at Osian have both had long, complex, and perhaps occasionally broken histories of Jain patronage. The Jain "rediscovery" of the Mahavir temple in the late nineteenth century was part of a broader process whereby urban, wealthy, and socially connected Jain communities "reclaimed" control over Jain temples that in preceding decades and centuries had come under increasing non-Jain control. This was part also of a broader process of the Jains of western India consciously reforming themselves, and recreating the Jain community along perceived ideal norms in terms of temple rituals, marriage practices, and mendicant practice. The mendicant most centrally involved in the publicizing of the Osian Mahavir temple as an important regional Jain pilgrimage shrine was one Jnansundarji. This brilliant and idiosyncratic mendicant had "converted" from the iconoclastic Shvetambar Sthanakvasi sect to the iconodulic Shvetambar Murtipujak sect (one of dozens of mendicants who made such conversions in that period). However, rather than follow in the mendicant lineage of his conversion guru, he single-handedly set out to create a new mendicant lineage, the Upkesh Gacch. While this gacch had been in existence since medieval times, there is no evidence that it was ever anything but a linage of resident semi-monks (yatis). Jnansundarji, however, tried to make it a lineage of full-fledged mendicants (samvegi sadhus). He also attempted to create an allied lay community, in order to create an orthodox four-fold (monks, nuns, laymen, laywomen) Jain community. Over several decades Jnansundarji tirelessly authored books and pamphlets, both to establish the historicity of his project, but also to create the necessary liturgical foundation. While Jnansundarji’s project was a signal failure, it does allow us to see what this one brilliant ideologue saw as the necessary forms of an ideal Jain mendicant lineage.