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Topic

Speaker

Summary

Talk 1

The Jain Mahābhāratas

Prof Dr Eva De Clercq, Associate Professor Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Belgium

In this lecture, Eva De Clercq presents an overview of the Jain Mahābhārata materials from the Āgamas onwards. She explores the various ways in which later Jain poets integrated, transformed, or otherwise engaged with these themes, in different languages and genres illustrating those with some selected excerpts.

Talk 2

O Maharaj! Take these lemons – A Yati's journey to East-Africa

Prof Dr Tine Vekemans, Ācārya Mahāprajña Chair for Jain Studies Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Belgium

This talk starts from a travelogue relating the experiences of a Jain mendicant travelling around the Western Indian Ocean in 1946. It focusses on the doubts and motivations that structure his decision to accept an invitation to visit Mombasa, and touches upon themes of reform and counter-reform, the impact of modernity on lay-mendicant relations, and the possibility of pan sectarian as well as subaltern solidarity.