Brian Black - Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Traditions

DIALOGUE IN EARLY SOUTH ASIAN RELIGIONS

RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE AND HISTORY

Series Editors

Laurie Patton, Duke University, USA

Brian Black, Lancaster University, UK

Face-to-face conversation and dialogue are defining features of South Asian traditional texts, rituals and practices. Not only has the region of South Asia always consisted of a multiplicity of peoples and cultures in communication with each other, but also performed and written dialogues have been indelible features within the religions of South Asia; Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Islam are all multi-vocal religions. Their doctrines, practices, and institutions have never had only one voice of authority, and dialogue has been a shared tactic for negotiating contesting interpretations within each tradition.

This series examines the use of the dialogical genre in South Asian religious and cultural traditions. Historical inquiries into the plurality of religious identity in South Asia, particularly when constructed by the dialogical genre, are crucial in an age when, as Amartya Sen has recently observed, singular identities seem to hold more destructive sway than multiple ones. This series will approach dialogue in its widest sense, including discussion, debate, argument, conversation, communication, confrontation, and negotiation. It will aim to open up a dynamic historical and literary mode of analysis, which assumes the plural dimensions of religious identities and communities from the start. In this way the series aims to challenge many outdated assumptions and representations of South Asian religions.

Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Traditions

Edited by

BRIAN BLACK

Lancaster University, UK

LAURIE PATTON

Duke University, USA

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright Brian Black, Laurie Patton and the contributors 2015

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Dialogue in early South Asian religions : Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions / edited by Brian Black and Laurie Patton.

pages cm. (Dialogues in South Asian traditions: religion, philosophy, literature, and history)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-4012-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4094-4013-0 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-3155-7697-8 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-3171-5141-8 (epub) 1. South Asia Religion. 2. Sacred books History and criticism. 3. Religious literature History and criticism. 4. Dialogue Religious aspects. 5. Hinduism. 6. Buddhism. 7. Jainism.

I. Black, Brian, 1970 editor. II. Patton, Laurie L., 1961 editor.

BL1055.D53 2015

294dc23

2014035199

ISBN: 9781409440123 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781409440130 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781315576978 (ebk-PDF)

ISBN: 9781317151418 (ebk-ePUB)

Brian Black and Laurie Patton

Laurie Patton

Alf Hiltebeitel

Anna Aurelia Esposito

Naomi Appleton

Douglas Osto

Elizabeth M. Rohlman

Andrew J. Nicholson

Michael Nichols

Jonathan Geen

Lisa Wessman Crothers

Brian Black

Naomi Appleton teaches and researches Asian religions in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, specializing in the ways in which story is used to construct, communicate and challenge religious ideas and practices in early South Asia. She is the author of Jtaka Stories in Theravda Buddhism (Ashgate, 2010) and Narrating Karma and Rebirth: Buddhist and Jain Multi-life Stories (Cambridge University Press, 2014), as well as a number of articles on religious narrative in South and Southeast Asia. She is currently working with Dr James Hegarty of Cardiff University on a project entitled The Story of Story in Early South Asia: Character and Genre across Buddhist, Jain and Hindu Traditions.

Brian Black is Lecturer in Religious Studies in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. His research interests include Indian religions, comparative philosophy, the use of dialogue in Indian religious and philosophical texts, and Hindu and Buddhist ethics. He is author of the book The Character of the Self in Ancient India: Priests, Kings, and Women in the Early Upaniads (SUNY Press, 2007); he is co-editor (with Simon Brodbeck) of the book Gender and Narrative in the Mahbhrata (Routledge, 2007); and he is co-editor (with Laurie Patton) of the book series Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religion, Philosophy, Literature and History (Ashgate).

Lisa Wessman Crothers is Assistant Professor of Religion at Wooster College in Wooster, Ohio. Her research interests include kingship in ancient India, rhetoric and ideology in Indian Buddhist and Brahmanical narratives, and scripture as literature. She is the author of, among other essays, Duryodhanas Pride and Perception: The Dynamics of Distrust in the Moment of Counsel at the Kaurava Court, in The Mahbhrata: What is not here is nowhere else, edited by T.S. Rukmani (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2005). She is currently working on a book manuscript about the role of the advisor and moments of advice-giving in early Indian traditions.

Anna Aurelia Esposito is Assistant Professor to the Chair of Indology in the Department of Cultural Studies of East- and South-Asia at the University of Wrzburg. She studied Indology and Cultural Anthropology in Wrzburg, Heidelberg, and Tbingen, where she obtained her MA by producing a critical edition and translation of the one-act play Dtavkya attributed to Bhsa (1998). After her dissertation a critical edition of the drama Crudatta with translation and a study of the South Indian drama Prakrits (2003) she moved the focus of her research to Jaina Prakrit and literature. She is currently working on a project granted by the German Research Foundation about the transmission of religious and moral contents in Jain narrative literature.

Jonathan Geen received his doctorate at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) in 2001 under Phyllis Granoff. He has taught at McMaster University, Butler University, and the University of Rochester, and is currently Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Kings University College at Western University (London, Ontario, Canada). Much of his academic work has focused upon the textual interactions between Hinduism and Jainism, particularly as manifested in epic and mythological texts.