Jains and Christians

[Frank Conlon]

With reference to Peter Friedlander's query, I think, but cannot document
at the moment, that I encountered some references to Jains in Church
Mission Society papers at the University of Birmingham, but as I was in
pursuit of another subject, I took no notes.  The Marathi scholar Phillip
Engblom, presented a paper on missionary attitudes in Maharashtra at the
Wisconsin South Asia Conference last October which documented that two
American missionaries had rather different perceptions of a Jain
shrine--one knowing that Jainism existed, the other thinking it part of
the Hindu order.

It sometimes strikes me that late 20th century scholarship on the
production of knowledge in India during the 19th century, has insufficient
grasp of the contingent and imperfect transmission of that knowledge at
the time.  I have found that some of my students, once they have mastered
a phrase like "colonial project" allow it to take on a life of its own and
assume that what was "known" in 1880 was (or ought to have been) known in
1840 or 1820.

Frank Conlon
University of Washington
Co-editor of H-ASIA