Regional Study of Jainism

This is a separate trend in the field of Jain researches. Here, individual researches have concentrated their efforts on reconstructing the history of rise, development and decline of the Jain sects and their impact on the sociocultural life of the people of a particular region. In 1901, V.A. Simth published his book entitled The Jain Stūpa and Other Antiquities of Mathura. This is a work of outstanding value for all later studies of Jain antiquities from Kankali Tila, Mathura and he also gives interesting details proving the existence of Jain nuns and their influential position in the Jain saṃgha. The combined form of M.S. Ramaswami Ayyangar’s “South Indian Jainism” and B. Seshagiri Rao’s “Andhra Karnataka Jainism” was published under the title of Studies in South Indian Jainism (1922). These two articles help us to known about the gradual development of Jainism in the Tamil region. R.P. Chanda made a valuable study (1925-26) on the Jain sculptural remains of Rajgir, Bihar. K.P. Jayaswal’s discovery of “Torso of a Jain Image of Mauryan Period” from Lohanipur near Patna, published in Journal of Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. XXIII, was an epoch-making discovery in the study of Indian iconography of historical period. Later on, P.C. Roy Choudhury’s Jainism in Bihar (1956) indicates how Jainism took birth, developed and spread in Bihar and in recent year B.K. Tiwary’s (1996) book, History of Jainism in Bihar also highlighted the same issues.

V.S. Agrawala’s catalogue of Mathura Museum has been very useful to all students of Jain art and culture. K. Bruhn (1969, 1986, 1993, 1995 & 2000) carried out an extensive study of Jain sculptures at Deogarh and minutely documented the Jain images of this area. C.J. Shah’s Jainism in North India, 800 BCE -CE 526 (1932) was a purely historical study based on literary and epigraphic sources which started with the critical assessment of the historicity of the earlier Tīrthaṅkaras and gave a detailed account of the expansion of Jainism in Mathura, Ujjayini and other parts of North India.

We can understand the growth and development of Jainism in South India from the works of B.A. Saletore (1938), S.R. Sharma (1940), A. Chakravarti (1941) P.B. Desai (1957) R.B. Prasad (1973/2008) S. Settar (1989 and 1990) and others.

C.B. Seth is the author of Jainism in Gujarat (1953) and gives a brief account of the activities of the Jainas in different fields and their contribution to the cultural life of Gujarat. M.N.P. Tiwari’s contribution with respect to North India is commendable, especially on sites like Khajuraho and published them (1983 & 1989).

In the context of Orissa, N.K. Sahu (1956) made a pioneering attempt in this line of research on Jainism. Latter on various scholars likes K.C.Panigrahi (1961, 1981), D.Mitra (1960), D.K.Ganguly (1975), D.R.Das (1977), R.P. Mohapatra (1981, 1984), H.C.Das (1985), A.C.Sahoo (1994), K.S.Behera & T.Donaldson (1998) and several others contributed for better understanding of the Jain religion and its cultural heritage in Orissa. A good numbers of stray articles on the Jain relics of Orissa were also published by P. Banerji, D. Mitra, K.S. Behera, A. Joshi, N.K. Dash and others.