Jainism under Threat: Extreme Forms of Dependency in Medieval Karnataka, South India
Abstract: The Jaina religion originates in East India in about the sixth century BCE. It reached the South Indian State of Karnataka in about the second century CE. From the fifth century CE onwards, Jainism appears to have risen steadily to a position of supremacy in the region. The hegemony of the Jainas and their control of all areas of life throughout Karnataka was especially pronounced from the eighth to eleventh centuries CE. However, from the twelfth century, the influence diminished rapidly and the Jaina community ended up in a position of severe asymmetrical dependency. This presentation will focus on the reasons for the initial rise and the subsequent irreversible decline of the Jainas in the State. Causes are to be found in religious, social, political and economic areas.
Bio: Julia A.B. Hegewald is professor of Oriental Art History and head of the Department of Asian and Islamic Art History at the University of Bonn. She was reader in Art History at the University of Manchester (2007–2010), a postdoctoral fellow at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University (2005–2007) and a research fellow at University College Oxford (1998–2005). She studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, from where she also holds a PhD. She is one of the Principal Investigators in the Cluster of Excellence “Beyond Slavery and Freedom” in Bonn. In the context of the Cluster, she has published Jaina Tradition of the Deccan: Shravanabelagola, Mudabidri, Karkala (2021) and Embodied Dependencies and Freedoms: Artistic Communities and Patronage in Asia (2023). Forthcoming is her latest book, entitled Jaina Culture in Medieval Karnataka: Dominance, Dependency and Endurance.