Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-11(E), Section: A.

Adviser: Phyllis Granoff.

Access restricted by licensing agreement.

This item is not available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.

This dissertation investigates Jain engagement with aesthetic pleasure, particularly dance and drama, from the early centuries of the Common Era through medieval times. The tension between sensual pleasure and restraint of the sense organs as expressed in Jain literary sources reflects larger processes within Jain culture, such as the continuous negotiation of doctrine and practice in light of canonical prescriptions, mendicant leaders' injunctions, individual monks' positions, and lay practice.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the role of dance-drama in Svetambara Jain canonical texts and later narrative literature. It reveals that despite canonical warnings against engagement with dance-drama, pleasure produced by aesthetic activities was thought to contribute to the efficacy of rituals involved in the worship of the Jina. Chapter 2 is an elaborate analysis of one episode of the worship of the Jina that involves a performance of thirty-two dance-dramas arranged by the god Suriyabha. It argues that Suriyaha's performance signifies a journey of the god and the audience from this-worldly pleasures to the otherworldly pursuit of liberation and embodies an offering to the Jina, while creating a model of worship for laypeople. Chapter 3 centers on an ideological debate surrounding the role of aesthetic practices in temple rites between the Kharatara monks and the monk-court poet Ramacandra (1093-1174), who is the most prolific Jain playwright and the central figure in this thesis. It proposes that the eleventh-thirteenth century Kharatara monks, particularly Jinadatta (1075-1154) and Jinapala (thirteenth century), restricted aesthetic pleasure in lay devotional expression as part of the formation and promotion of their collective identity. In opposition to that, Ramacandra valorized the sensual rapture that temple rites offer to devotees and placed it at the heart of the Jain religious experience. Chapter 4 shifts the focus to the distinctive theory of aesthetics developed by Ramacandra together with his fellow Jain monk Gunacandra. It contends that the monks aimed to uncouple the genre of didactic literature (dharmakatha ) from drama and render the experience of aesthetic pleasure as the key to the discernment between the illusion of transmigratory existence, samsara, and what is real. Chapter 5 offers a study of Ramacandra's extant dramas that employ a variety of literary devices in order to generate a strong emotional response in the audience. It argues that Ramacandra's dramas cannot be reduced to didactic or political goals but integrate this-worldly joys and sorrows with the other-worldly goal of liberation The edifying message in the dramas is conveyed in the structural and thematic organization in a way that does not disrupt the plot and is at the heart of the final aesthetic rapture. Ramacandra advocates for a new type of Jain intellectual and author, who is free from monastic restrictions and on par with the greatest exemplars of the Sanskrit literary tradition.