A Kharatara Gaccha Monk in the Tapā Gaccha Imaginaire, SOAS, University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2014-04-08

This lecture titled "A Kharatara Gaccha Monk in the Tapā Gaccha Imaginaire:  Tapā Gaccha Re-tellings of the Life of Jinaprabhasūri" was given by Steve M. Vose (Florida International University, USA) 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/

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

Abstract:
Two narratives of the encounter between Sultan Muḥammad bīn Tughluq (r. 1325-1351) and Jinaprabhasūri (ca. 1261-1333 CE), ācārya of the Laghu Śākhā of the Kharatara Gaccha, appear in the monk's magnum opus, the Vividhatīrthakalpa ('Chapters on Various Pilgrimage Places'). In these narratives, the sultan grants to Jinaprabhasūri several edicts (farmāns) protecting Jains and Jain pilgrimage places, returns an image of Mahāvīra taken in an earlier military operation, and establishes a quarter in Delhi for Jains complete with a new temple and upāśraya. Jinaprabha claims his success with the sovereign rested on his skills as a poet and debater. 

Over the next two centuries, Jinaprabhasūri's story would be retold several times, first by mendicants of his own lineage, and later by Tapā Gaccha monks. In several Tapā Gaccha narrative collections, his story begins to acquire new elements, detailing his special connection with the goddess Padmāvatī and, especially in the Tapā Gaccha narratives, his ability to effect minor miracles. Far from merely invented narrative elements, these details seem to coincide with a portrait of the monk that emerges when his entire oeuvre is taken into account. As one of the most prolific authors in Kharatara Gaccha history, Jinaprabhasūri composed roughly 100 hymns and 40 other works, including commentaries, works on grammar, poetics, and mendicant conduct, as well as several works on esoteric rituals, mantras, and astrology. Among his hymns one finds several dedicated to goddesses, including Padmāvatī. Jinaprabhasūri's production became the stuff of legend in the Tapā Gaccha, as a tradition emerged that he gifted 700 of his own hymns to his younger counterpart, Somatilakasūri (1298-1367), claimed to be a goodwill offering between the two mendicant orders. These narratives also included miraculous happenings both in the sultan's court and elsewhere, but also featured Jinaprabha's confession to his Tapā counterpart that his involvement with the sultan had compromised his ability to keep the strict vows of a Jain monk. 
 
This paper examines the fifteenth-sixteenth-century Tapā Gaccha narratives about the Kharatara Gaccha monk Jinaprabhasūri (1261-1333 CE) to argue that the order's interest in him was a locus for discussing several aspects of mendicancy and leadership that the Tapā order faced throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In these narratives, we can follow the Tapā order's emergence as the leading gaccha, having supplanted the Kharatara order in Gujarat as the most influential and numerous mendicant order after the demise of the Delhi Sultanate state and the establishment of an independent sultanate in Gujarat. Jinaprabhasūri's narrative would provide the narrative structure for understanding Hīravijayasūri's success with the Mughal emperor Akbar. It is only after the Tapā success in the Mughal court that Jinaprabhasūri's story fades into obscurity, dealt its final blow when the Tapā polemicist Dharmasāgara excoriates the Kharatara monk and Tapā Gaccha monks who spoke favourably of him.