Johannes Klatt's Jaina Onomasticon, SOAS, University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2014-04-08

This lecture titled "Johannes Klatt's Jaina Onomasticon" was given by Peter Flügel and Kornelius Krümpelmann (SOAS) at the Centre of Jaina Studies, SOAS, University of London as part of the 16th Jaina Studies Workshop: Jaina Hagiography and Biography on 21st March 2014.

You can find out more about the Centre of Jaina Studies at http://www.soas.ac.uk/jainastudies/

You can find out more about this event at http://bit.ly/1oJsvkk

This lecture was sponsored by SOAS, University of London; the V&A; Universiteit Gent; GSF and the Jiv Daya Foundation.

Abstract:
For at least ten years, until he fell severely ill, the German Indologist Johannes Klatt (1852--1903) worked on the "Jaina Onomasticon", his magnum opus. He never recovered to complete his task and left behind 5338 pages, handwritten in English. To this day the manuscript, kept in the library of the Asia-Africa-Institute in Hamburg, is unpublished. It is good news for every scholar interested in the post-canonical history of Jaina literary, social and religious traditions, that a print edition of Klatt's encyclopaedic work is currently in preparation at SOAS, Centre of Jaina Studies (in 2012 the project of preparing the publication of the "Onomasticon" was awarded a three-year research grant by the Leverhulme Trust). It is hoped that an expandable electronic version of the text can be made available in the near future as well. In his manuscript Klatt gives in alphabetical order a list of all proper names of Jaina authors, texts, gacchas, place names, etc. he could gather from primary sources (colophons of manuscripts) and secondary sources (catalogues, monographs, articles), adding to each entry relevant biographical and bibliographical data. The paper will discuss the position of Klatt's work in the field of Jaina Studies in 19th century, give a general overview of the sources he used, and describe his method of organizing and presenting the vast material he had collected.