Description

This Lecture is Dedicated to the Memory of Joseph O’Connell, Scholar, Teacher, Community Builder and Friend to the Centre for South Asian Studies.

Stotras – hymns of praise – are part of the religious culture of all Jains in their daily life. But they are a world in themselves, so different they may be in language, style and purposes. Sung in worship, improvised by enthusiastic devotees on the spot, conceived as literary feats where all linguistic resources are made use of, chanting episodes in the lives of the Jinas, or Jinahood, as it were, they are able to reach different of audiences and appeal to all tastes. With the help of representative exemples, this lecture intends to explore this vast world and underline the fundamental role of hymns in the transmission of values to generations of Jains. Numerous anthologies of Jain hymns are available in India; efforts have been made in the West to draw attention to Hindu hymns through studies and translations. Why not join efforts to make Jain hymns even better known than they are to Western audiences in publications that would be reliable and attractive?

Of Franco-Indian origin, Nalini Balbir is professor of Indology at University of Paris-3 Sorbonne Nouvelle and at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Section Sciences historiques et philologiques), where she teaches Sanskrit, Middle-Indian languages and Hindi. Her fields of research are primarily Jainism in all its aspects (philological and contemporary), Theravada Buddhism, as well as Pali and Prakrit languages and literature. In recent years she has been engaged in cataloguing of Jain manuscripts in various European countries. She is at present the chief editor of the JAINpedia website, an educational resource containing descriptions of digitized manuscripts and a multi-handed encyclopedia of Jainism online.