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This book presents a detailed fieldwork based study of the ancient Indian religion of Jainism. Drawing on field research in northern Gujarat and on the study of both ancient Sanskrit and Prakrit and modern vernacular Jain religious literature, John Cort provides a rounded portrait of the religion as it is practiced today. Cort begins by looking at the institutional structures that make up Jain society and by examining the major facets of Jain practice. Separate ...
Open boundaries provides a new perspective on Jainism, one of the oldest yet least studied of the world's living religions. Ten closely focused studies investigate the interactions between Jains and non-Jains in South Asian society, with detailed studies of yoga, tantra, aesthetic theory, erotic poetry, theories of kingship, Goddess worship, temple ritual, polemical poetry, religious women, and historiography. Viewing the Jains within a South Asian context ...
The essays in this book represent the fruits of an interdisciplinary study of four temples in Rajasthan jointly conducted by Lawrence A. Babb (anthropology), John E. Cort (religious studies), and Michael W. Meister (art history). The temples were chosen because they are both very ancient and also vibrantly functioning today. The results of the authors' research dramatically vindicate the idea that when disciplines are combined, the result is greater than the sum ...