We are happy to invite you to the next lecture in our “Emerging Scholars in Jain Studies” virtual series co-organized by the Departments of Religious Studies at UC Davis and UC Riverside. The lecture will be delivered by Itamar Ramot (University of Chicago) on Friday, September 29, 2023, 9:00-10:20am PDT. You will find more information about the lecture and the speaker below and on the belowflyer.
Register for the event here:
https://ucr.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pf--pqD4oGNH9Wk15PT_Mz1cpR7OGARtG
Please note that you will need to sign into your Zoom account before entering the Zoom room.
Best wishes,
Lynna Dhanani and Ana Bajzelj
The Credibility of Stories: Judiciousness and Coherence in a Jaina Narrative from 10th-11th century
From the early centuries of the common era, Jaina authors composed their own versions of stories that appear in sources such as the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, and purāṇas. These authors self-consciously present themselves as correcting preceding narratives that they do not accept as credible. But what makes one version more credible than another? And how should a reader adjudicate between the two? In this talk, Itamar Ramot argues that the two earliest available retellings of a Jaina narrative called the Dharmaparīkṣā— in Apabhraṃśa (988) and Sanskrit (1014)—address these questions through a complex set of arguments. First, these retellings establish coherence as a fundamental criterion for considering the credibility of a story. Second, by repeatedly pointing out the incoherencies of stories, they train their readers on how to be judicious with regard to the credibility of stories that they encounter. As such, the Dharmaparīkṣās offer a reflection on the motivation of premodern South Asian authors to retell already-existing narratives and on the reading practices they expect of their reader.
Itamar Ramot is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is interested in the intersection of literature and religion and specifically in the application of literature to questions of religious authority. In his research, he explores the mechanism by which medieval Jain thinkers used narrative literature to establish criteria about which stories should be considered credible and to train their readers on how to adjudicate the authority of the stories they encounter.
