Room 004, School of Arts and Sciences
Central Campus
The stories and hymns in the voluminous Jain Universal History of the great polymath Jain monk Hemacandra (1089-1172 CE) are replete with farcical and often amusing depictions and stories of puranic gods and of other gods more generally, creating a rather scathing, polemic-inspired humor. This paper will explore both the ways in which a medieval Jain monk capitalized on centuries-old caricatures of puranic gods in general, and the possible intended effects of such depictions on the religious imagination of his Saiva patrons and brahminical colleagues at court. Rather than understand such humor as mere sarcasm or ridicule, this paper will argue for its destabilizing effect on the religious imagination of Hemacandra’s readers that tears away at the “absolutism” of puranic doctrines and popular beliefs so as to both highlight their contradictory nature and to reinforce the supremacy of Jain thought and practice. Understanding this shows us how a minority tradition negotiated its own survival and space in medieval Gujarat.
Lynna Dhanani obtained her doctorate at Yale University and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is currently on a US-funded Fulbright Nehru Senior Scholar Research Fellowship in Ahmedabad for the 2024-25 academic year. In 2022-23, Dr Dhanani was also a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago as part of the Entanglements of Indian Pasts project for her work on the Indian manuscript preservation projects of the great 20th-century Jain scholar monk Muni Jambūvijaya. Her chapter entitled "Jambūvijaya and the Jaisalmer bhaṇḍār," which traces the enormous digitization project of the manuscript collections at Jaisalmer by Muni Jambūvijaya and his team of mendicants, laypeople, and technicians, will soon be appearing in an upcoming volume on Modern Sanskrit traditions. Her book project, currently titled Authority and Wonder: The Devotional Worlds of Hemacandra and Other Medieval Gujarati Hymn-makers, explores the confluence of poetic and aesthetic expression and philosophical debate in the Sanskrit hymns of the celebrated twelfth-century Śvetāmbara Jain Hemacandra—court pandit to two Hindu kings of medieval Gujarat—and of the hymns in Prakrit and Apabhramsha of his contemporaries in medieval northwest India. Having dedicated herself to the study of multiple Indian religions for more than two decades, Lynna has a wide range of interests including Sanskrit and Prakrit literatures, medieval Indian monastic cultures, yoga, Indian philosophy, and South Asian religious art. She co-curated the 2022-23 exhibition of Jain sacred wall hangings at the UCLA Fowler museum and is a co-author for the upcoming exhibition book to be published by September 2025.
