Singing to the Jinas: Jain Laywomen, Mandal Singing, and the Negotiations of Jain DevotionWhile Western Jain scholarship has focused on those texts and practices favoring male participation, the Jain community itself relies heavily on lay women's participation for religious education, the performance of key rituals, and the locus of religious knowledge. In this fieldwork-based study, Whitney Kelting attempts to reconcile these women's understanding of Jainism with the religion as presented in the existing scholarship. Jain women, she shows, both accept and rewrite the idealized roles received from religious texts, practices, and social expectation, according to which female religiosity is a symbol of Jain perfection. This volume describes these women's interpretations of their religion, not as folklore or popular religion, but as a theology that recreates Jainism in a form which honors their own participation. |
Contents
Chapter 1 Hearing and Listening to the Voices of the 346r257vik257 | 2 |
Chapter 2 Idealized Women | 38 |
Chapter 3 Religious Knowledge and Stavan Collecting | 60 |
Chapter 4 The Shapes and Categories of Stavan | 82 |
Chapter 5 Daily Worship Improvisation and Individual Devotion | 108 |
Chapter 6 Formal Puj257s and Stavan Repertoires | 138 |
Chapter 7 Expertise Prestige and Authority | 164 |
Chapter 8 Laywomens Authority and Jain Theology | 192 |
Notes | 205 |
Glossary | 235 |
| 243 | |
| 255 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Ajitnāth Ajitnath Temple Āratī asked auctions Bhaktamara Stotra bhakti caityavandan cassettes celebration central congregation context Cort Dadiji daily pūjā dance darśan decoration Digambar donation expertise fast fast-breaking female mendicants flywhisk formal pūjās Gujarat Gujarātī Hindī Hindu included Jain devotional Jain laywomen Jain mendicants Jain temple Jain women Jainism Jina image Jina's karma Khartar Gacch knowledge Maharashtra Mahāvīr male mendicants Maluben maṇḍal mandal performance mandal women Mantra Mārvāḍī melodies mokṣa Mumbai Navkār Navkar Mantra offerings ordination orthopraxy Pañcakalyāṇak Pūjā Pārśva Parsva Mandal Pārśvanāth participation Paryusan Prakrit praxis prayers prestige pūjā clothes pūjā performance pūjā text Pune Rajasthan Ranjana recitation religion repertoire Reynell ritual Śakra sandalwood sandalwood paste sang Sankheśvar Sanskrit Savita sentiment Sheelu Shivajinagar singers singing session Snātra Pūjā songs sponsor stavan books stavan collections stavan singing stotra Sudhāras Stavan Sangrah sung Sūtra svastik Svetambar Tapā Gacch tion understanding usually Vāstuk Pūjā woman women's mandal
Popular passages
Page vii - Circle), it was an entrance into many such circles where women order their worlds — not a place where women go when excluded from male activities or a space to which women are resigned, but a chosen space at the center of various women's communities.
Page xvi - But a book — like a daughter — one day leaves your house. My hope is that she finds acceptance and brings happiness wherever she goes.