Pūrṇabhadra’s Pañcatantra: Jaina Tales Or Brahmanical Outsourcing?
For over a hundred years, it has been assumed that the collection of Sanskrit narrative fables known as Pūrṇabhadra’s Pañcatantra was a Jaina text. For the last thirty years or so, one could assume that because the redactor inhabited a specific epistemic community, the Jaina ‘thought-world’, that th...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
[publisher not identified]
2011
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In: |
International Journal of Jaina Studies
Year: 2011, Volume: 7, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-17 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
Summary: | For over a hundred years, it has been assumed that the collection of Sanskrit narrative fables known as Pūrṇabhadra’s Pañcatantra was a Jaina text. For the last thirty years or so, one could assume that because the redactor inhabited a specific epistemic community, the Jaina ‘thought-world’, that this was not only obvious, but inevitable. This paper challenges both these assumptions, and will set out to demonstrate that the Pūrṇabhadra’s Pañcatantra is a product of a Brahminical, Hindu, episteme, and that the redactor, rather than being a trapped in the imaginary of Jaina society draw on the epistemic traditions of his choice. This will contribute to our understanding of pre-modern literary production, the Jaina thought-world and the workings of epistemic communities more generally. This article demonstrates that a Jaina is capable of producing a non-Jaina text. This might seem obvious, but it challenges our assumptions about the production of discourse in a given epistemic community. |
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ISSN: | 1748-1074 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: International Journal of Jaina Studies
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