Abstract: Jains in the World presents a detailed fieldwork-based study of Jainism, focusing on the Svetambar Murtipujak Jains of north Gujarat. The book explains the institutional structures that make up Jain society and gives a comprehensive exposition of the major facets of Jain practice. Separate chapters present descriptions of temple worship and the connected Jain understandings of divinity, interactions between laity and mendicants (monks and nuns), involving both the lay gifting of food and relations based on lay devotion and mendicant grace, ascetic and dietary practices, and the many festivals and observances that make up the Jain religious year. The portrait of the Jains that emerges in this book is radically different from that found in earlier text-based studies of the Jains. The author invokes the concept of ideology to explain why the earlier portrait has been so consistent and seemingly unchanging, and also why it differs from the lived experience of Jainism. An ideology describes the way ideologues argue that the world should be, and so serves as a powerful normative guide to both conduct and thought. Jains in the World explores the dynamic and creative interaction in Jainism between an explicit ideology of the path to liberation, with its denigration of worldly involvement, and an implicit, symbolically expressed realm of value the author terms ”well-being” (similar to what other scholars of India have termed ”auspiciousness”), which emphasizes the worldly benefits that come from Jain practice. The book therefore advances a theory and an example of how ideologies (explicit formulations of the nature of the world and proper conduct within the world) and religious values (implicit systems of meaning that are not explicitly formulated, and therefore do not receive the same attention in either insider or outsider depictions of the tradition, but which are nonetheless central to religious self-identity) interact within a religious tradition. While the discussion focuses on the Jains, the theoretical issues of how an explicitly enunciated religious ideology and an implicitly enunciated realm of value interact within the Jain world have theoretical implications for the broader fields of religious and cultural studies.

Keywords: asceticism, auspiciousness, gift, Gujarat, ideology, Jainism, liberation, religious festivals, religious values, well-being