Book cover of Early Modern Literatures in North India. The image on the cover shows Balwant Singh seated writing on a camp-bed. It is attributed to Nainsukh, c. 1760.

Comment citer

Cort, John E.: Jain Multiple Language Use and Cosmopolitanism , in Nagasaki, Hiroko, Horstmann, Monika et Okita, Kiyokazu (éd.): Early Modern Literatures in North India: Current Research 2022–2024, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2025, p. 33–61. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1553.c22774

Licence (Chapitre)

Creative Commons License

Ce travail est disponible sous licence Creative Commons Attribution - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International.

Identifiants (Livre)

https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1553
ISBN 978-3-98887-025-4 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-98887-024-7 (Softcover)

Publié

11/18/2025

Téléchargements

##plugins.themes.ubOmpTheme01.chapterDownload## (PDF/531KB)
##plugins.generic.hdOmpStatistic.statistic.button##

Auteurs

John E. Cort

Jain Multiple Language Use and Cosmopolitanism

An important development in the study of South Asia in recent years, and a development of direct importance to the ICEMLNI project, has been the extensive renewed attention to multiple language use in South Asia. We all owe a big thanks to Sheldon Pollock. His monumental 2006 The Language of the Gods in the World of Men and the related 2003 edited volume Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia have done much to generate research and theorization on this topic. Extensive subsequent scholarship, in some cases in direct response to Pollock’s work, and in other cases independent of it, has moved the discussion beyond Pollock’s in important ways. This chapter brings Jain literary history into the conversation. The vibrant use of multiple languages by Jain authors throughout the history of the tradition provides an important contribution to our understanding of language use in South Asian literary history. The Jains have long been committed to writing in multiple languages, so much so that many Jain authors have written in two, three, four, and even six languages. Jains have not privileged Sanskrit as the only cosmopolitan language; on the contrary, to be a cosmopolitan Jain author has involved being able to write in multiple languages.

John E. Cort is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, USA. His research focuses on religion, history, literature, culture and society in western India, especially Gujarat and Rajasthan, and especially on the Jains.