Sunday, September 03, 2017

The Jain Tradition: a basic bibliography



My bibliography for the Jain tradition is now available at my Academia page. Here is the introduction to this list:

As with most of my bibliographies, this list has two constraints: books only, in English (please note: missing subscript and supra-script diacritic dots). Readers may be interested in several companion compilations: on Hinduism, on Indian (or Indic) Philosophy, and on Buddhism. I would like to dedicate this bibliography* to Padmanabh S. Jaini, Professor emeritus of Buddhist Studies. I first read his book, The Jaina Path of Purification (University of California Press, 1979) in the early 1980s while a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My intermittent but no less abiding interest in the Jain worldview had been awakened upon learning of the profound influence of Jain philosophical doctrines (e.g., anekāntavāda), spiritual exercises and ethics (e.g., vows and fasts) on Mahatma Gandhi. Indeed, as Margaret Chatterjee notes, “Raicandbhāī [Mahetā], the saintly Jain jeweler, was the nearest thing to a guru that Gandhi ever had.” 

* I did not dedicate any of the eighty prior bibliographies. 

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