Sweetmeats or corpses? Art history and ethnohistory

The President and Fellows of Harvard College Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Sweetmeats or Corpses? Art History and Ethnohistory Author(s): Michael W. Meister Reviewed work(s): Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 27 (Spring, 1995), pp. 118-132 Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20166921 . Accessed: 08/11/2011 10:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, J. Paul Getty Trust are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics. http://www.jstor.org 118 RES 27 SPRING 1995 Figure 9. An eighth-century image of the calm goddess K?emankar? from the Saciy?m?t? temple compound at Osi?n (probably the original image representing Saciy?m?t?). Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. Sweetmeats or corpses? Art history and ethnohistory MICHAELW. MEISTER Art history is concerned with the life of objects. It has most often focused on their makers and the contexts inwhich Scholars have they are produced. assume that while history leads up to an tended to is and other objects flow from itsmaking, what "objectified" has been frozen at the moment of making, thus becoming the proper study for research. George Kubier (1962) and Ernst Gombrich (1961) have, as art in quite different ways questioned how art historians, object objects are identifying linked together: "prime objects," Kubler in terms of through a system "schemata." Both see one Gombrich representational object affecting another, with art leading to art through time. Both see a process requiring that an object's be tested in relation to their and mechanisms meaning in time. Neither, it seems to me, have position demarcating the primacy or the unvarying reliability of or maker at the moment of making. That the object also has a life after itsmaking?that a monument, its painting, or sculpture can interact with users over time inways significant beyond the questioned the object sometimes seemed to me intention of its artist?has more a matter for the ethnohistorian than the art If the "intention" of the artist has always historian. seemed a natural subject for the art historian, some scholars instead increasingly have sought to define the audience's "horizon of expectation." The phrase "horizon of expectation" was used first in a limited sense to characterize "the by Gombrich the expected and the It has since been expounded (1961:60).1 experienced" into a theory by those German literary critics who have an to formulate "aesthetic of reception" (Iser attempted in 1978; Jauss 1982).2 Gombrich, part, had suppressed such a "reception theory" by associating his "horizon" relationship between 1. Gombrich's A. W. Mellon are incorporated lectures, which Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial (New York: Pantheon, Representation 1961), were originally presented at the National in 1956. D.C., Gallery of Art, Washington, into Art and 2. Iser (1978) use of this phrase, in his index. cites Gombrich which Gombrich but not specifically his frequently or put himself does not develop less with functions the full expressive potential and social art of than with the perceptual process alone. Iser, however, praised Gombrich, saying that "at no time does he separate representation from the of reception" (1978:90-91). conditions He argues that Gombrich's of Gestalt psychology's expansion categories of "schema and correction" had provided "the functional the schema fecundity of [Gombrich's] a reference which embodies model, is then for transcended by the correction." Iser's interpretation of Gombrich, however, has not the functions of audience fully separated operational from artist: Each schema makes the world accessible in accordance with the conventions the artist inherited. But when something new is perceived ... it can only be represented a correction. . . While . by means of the world to be represented, the correction evokes the observer's reactions to that represented the schema enables world. in introducing Jauss (Jauss 1982:xiv), Paul de Man, that "the procedure [of reception theory] a structure model for the articulation between provides and interpretation," differentiates the work from its synchronie setting, and "inscribes" the work "in the claims historical, diachronic motion of its understanding, which ends in the discovery of properties held in common between the work and its projected history." He points out that "at the moment of its inception, the individual work of art stands out as unintelligible with He goes on to regard to the prevailing conventions." "The between the work and its future say, relationship is not purely arbitrary. It contains elements of genuine similarity that can circulate freely paradigmatic between the formal singularity of the work and the its reception." of history If "reception theory" and "reader-response criticism" have both gained considerable attention within literary in the past thirty years, setting up an critical circles active "hermeneutics" and interplay between as de Man and mechanics "poetics"?between meaning defines them, or, in other words, between the practice of interpreting and the practice of making?I might still RES 27 SPRING 1995 120 to de Man's the cautionary warning within context "Hermeneutics and 1982:ix-x): (Jauss literary a as of have different way poetics, they are, becoming as indeed they have since Aristotle and entangled, before. One can look upon the history of literary theory as the continued this knot and to attempt to disentangle reasons record the for failing to do so." point If it has been "diachronic has most eminence" often of making" and the of making that of the moment the foundation for the art the "mechanics formed the reception of the object and approach, calculation of that reception (or receptions) have played their part in recent art-historical dialogue. historian's the maker's iswell This summarized review of John Shearman. Kemp's recent by Wolfgang writes: (1994:367) Kemp Reception aesthetics escapes the fallacies both of formalism and of intentionalism if it conceives of the work and its surroundings, the text and its context, as reciprocally interpreting entities, indeed if itdemonstrates that the text is as effective within its context as is the context within the text.3 My point, however, goes beyond the reception of a in a series of contexts, but suggests that the fixed object a "series" as it interacts with different forms itself object time. contexts through Ethnohistory may mean many 1990; (Ohnuki-Tierney things to its practitioners O'Brien and Roseberry 1991; Knapp 1992); but to me, in the present itmust start with ethnographic evidence from the past (including and traces of similar evidence and historical data) and work previous ethnography back through time's transforming patterns to represent or illuminate a past reality. Its virtue to me as an art is that it can provide a rationale for seeing historian an object's making and its each slice in time, between present use, as an equal reality ready to be studied (as in Davis 1992 and 1993). in his archival study of (1981:4-5), Arjun Appadurai one south Indian temple in the colonial period, has helped to define appropriate ethnohistorical methodology, for an parameters of which he wrote that it: entails the analysis of all the traces, structural or cultural, that the institution under study has left on the past. But the collection of such traces, however minute and detailed, would not constitute "ethnohistory/' but rather history, pure and simple. What makes itethnohistory is its link to the 3. review Iwould to me conversation. like to thank and Jack Greenstein for his always interesting both for pointing and comments out this present, to the cognitive and structural ways inwhich these traces have become compacted in the meaning systems of actors in the present. Clifford Geertz (1973) him, the anthropologist in of "deep description" had set a methodology to offer a that seemed to Appadurai ethnography Before mechanism for his ethnohistorical study. Appadurai wrote that, given the "ethnohistorical premise" of his own study, "I hope to show how alterations in social with a structure, over time, interact dialectically unaltered cultural system" (1981:6). fundamentally The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1976; 1981), on the other hand, in much of his work?and as he it in a recent article in RES: Anthropology and phrases "'tradition' Aesthetics that (1992:21)?has emphasized is not static, nor is it in this way opposed to 'modernity.'" He cites Remo Guidieri and Francesco instances Pellizzi's poignant observation that "in many . . . ethnic memory seems capable of reconsol ?dating in form, so that the authenticity through mutations current task of traditional societies appears to be the recycling of ethnic memory through various forms of In this way, in fact, cultural reinterpretation" (1988:26). the present forever extends the past. Sahlins poses an anthropological thesis that "what as as ends transformation"?that began reproduction unaltered" nothing remains "fundamentally to an writes: "The great challenge (1981:67)?and is not merely to know how historical anthropology events are ordered by culture, but how, in that process, the culture is reordered. How does the reproduction of a structure become its transformation?" (ibid.:8). a theory and If "reception aesthetics" both represents a polemic, seems more a material and ethnohistory If reception pragmatic experiment with methodology. is has theory overly self-conscious, ethnohistory remained somewhat unself-critical. Bernard Cohn has essay outlining pointed out in his encyclopedia "ethnohistory" that "there has been little effort to build or a body of generalizations, either through comparison of concepts of categories of through the development that would make sequences interregional comparison (1968:441). possible" Dirks more recently has given the Nicholas "the following as his definition of ethnohistory: about the reconstruction of an indigenous discourse 1993:9). This goal, of past" (1987:58; cited inWagoner as it to the Italian Renaissance is as applicable course, that "in more is to India. Cohn's cautionary comment 121 Meister: Notes and discussions recent years 'ethnohistory' has come to mean the of historical study any non-European peoples" should He ends this be taken as a warning (1968:440). excursus on ethnohistory (1968:446) by stating: Inmy own field of Indian architectural history I have of written about the importance of the conservation nature of the of but also monuments, archaeological India's own distinctive mechanisms for "preservation of sacredness as a cultural resource" (Meister 1989). If I India's temples initially as an I have also and (Meister 1983-91), archaeologist Dhaky tried to point out that it is the institution and its and conventions that changing cultural consensuses have documented the monument, forms (Meister 1990). TJrthas?that is, natural as liminal spaces (such as caves, and so mountains, going its architectural beyond "crossing points" perceived groves, river junctions, sacred places forth)?define links them. Monuments only mark from away ones approaches universalizing to more in order her many cultural environments (Meister 1988). I think can be done in my As an example of what like to summarize one recent case study field, Iwould of mine, that of the temple-city of Osia? situated on within 4. See, Riegl's Origin," Oppositions 5. This is based the recent Cult 25 (1982). on research translation of Monuments: "Jains in Indian History" at Amherst in this somewhat abbreviated and presented College, rhetoricized form for a panel Jains?that study of these two temples the title "Sweetmeats or Corpses? and Sacred Places," in Conversion, Community, conversion reference to the legend of this goddess's from Hindu to Jain practices of eating meat or I have given I shall recount shortly;8 but whether sweetmeats, which or monographs? our museums India's art objects?in will be perceived by modern viewers as "sweetmeats" we or "corpses" must depend on the methodologies them. develop and apply to understand In exploring at the continuing role of the monuments Ichose to draw on three bodies of evidence: Osia?, lineage" (Hoernle 1890); and third, a "New Paradigms, Old Killings" at the sixth American in New York, April 1994. for South Asian Art Symposium a site plan of Osia? 6. George Michell has published (1989:301). entitled Committee and presentation ItsCharacter and first at a workshop Itwas June 1993. is, to mark the point of a Rajput clan's origination, their "kul-devJ" shrine.7 That role is, at present, reserved for a larger pilgrimage temple to the goddess called Saciy?m?t? (fig. 3) dedicated ("mother Saciy?") or Saciy?devT ("goddess Saciy?") set on a hill of the same name just west of the village at Osv?l (ancient Upakesa) desert.5 At this site there are many for comparison, 'The Modern some of whom still send their male origins to Osia?), children to the attached Jain school (fig. 8) founded about eighty years ago (Vashishtha 1988). This temple does not serve, however, as the "origin" temple for and record of monuments first, the archaeological inscriptions (Bhandarkar 1907, 1909, 1910; Nahar 1918; Dhaky 1968; Meister and Dhaky 1991); second, a seventeenth-century text called the Patt?valT of the or the "list of pontiffs of Osia? Upakesa-Caccha in order to create an ethnohistory's methodologies accurate understanding of the roles art has played Alois Jain temple India (Dhaky 1968:312-327; Meister and Dhaky This now serves as 1991:182-189). the "mother" temple for the broadly disbursed merchant of Osv?l Jains (that is, Jains who trace their community (Babb 1993:9-10). case To the extended to present and re-present the polys?mie and contextualizations interpretations multiple in India's in the many embedded layers still surviving even more Art India than past. history?in perhaps on some to of have take may elsewhere?increasingly the Rajasthan It is the oldest still later additions). surviving inwestern Osia? in India. Pilgrimage conservation them. I have written of the archaeological of monuments that "conserving temples as artifacts conserves the sacredness of artifacts, but maintaining centers fit institutional demands of patronage [to the] is a difficult task" (Meister 1989:279).4 and pilgrimage Increasingly, the field of Indian art history has had to move from several and others It is, however, in the study of the preindustrial and modernizing societies of today and of the historical societies that characterized the whole world before the beginning of the nineteenth century that the anthropologist and the historian would appear to need each other. constitute periods, some still used for Of these, the two abandoned.6 worship sites attention. demand special pilgrimage to the early Jain is dedicated One temple at Osia? saint Mah?v?ra (fig. 1). Itdates initially from late in the in A.D. 956 and with eighth century A.D. (reformulated temples of Its on given accurate not sufficiently in placement, is, however, orientation for reproduction here. 7. See the discussion in Harlan of kul-devl shrines This 8. Seminar on scale, and (1992). "Jains in Indian History," Amherst, Massachusetts, in a detailed report on this research will appear June 1993. A more volume entitled tentatively Open Boundaries based on this seminar. 122 RES 27 SPRING 1995 ? Figure 1.Mahav?ra Jain temple in 1972. Osia?, Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. ?ka?&#E?& <Uia^? observations recorded by visitors body of ethnographic in this century. to Osia? The archaeological record for monuments from the eighth to the thirteenth century has now been laid out rather clearly, first by M. A. Dhaky (1968) and then by the present author in the Encyclopaedia of Indian (Meister and Dhaky 1991). The Temple Architecture on the Saciy?m?t? hill was first founded compound early in the eighth century, and two structures from that period still survive. The main sanctum for the goddess of the Saciy?m?t? temple was replaced by the presently standing structure in A.D. 1178. Subshrines were added in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries (as well as in the period from 1983 to 1993). nine more The Mahav?ra Jain temple, located on the desert hill (site plan, plain to the south of the Saciy?m?t? Michell 1989:301), was built first around A.D. 775; a added a subshrine major replanning of the compound to the east of its entry hall in A.D. 956; a gateway was added in front of the main temple in A.D. 1018; and to be added into the twelfth other subshrines continued Figure 2. Bhandarkar's sketch plan of the Mahav?ra temple's compound in 1906. Courtesy: Harvard College Library. century (fig. 4). The sanctum's present superstructure was built only in the fifteenth century (fig. 5). Iwould in argue that the courses of renovation and expansion these two compounds, and not simply their chronology, Meister: Notes and discussions 123 k 4KfsHfer ??ivimpiiv?MhE|^L. Figure 3. Saciy?m?t? temple in 1972. Osia?, ' Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. . "^^^flHHfl^^^Hr^'tii Figure 4. Bhandarkar's sketch plan of the Mah?v?ra temple's compound in 1904. Osia?, Rajasthan. Photo: Courtesy of Harvard College Library. *- ! ? tS^: s'? t^*\ ' Wr^^fB Figure 5. Mah?v?ra temple, fifteenth-century superstructure above eighth-century walls. The Saciy?m?t? temple is in the background. Osia?, Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. 124 RES 27 SPRING 1995 are of these monuments integral to our understanding and that recent decades are as important as the of past periods (fig. 6). archaeology The text involved, the PattavalT of the was first published by Rudolf Upakesa-Gaccha, in 1890. Of the historical applicability Hoernle of this as its lack of one), the text (orwhat he perceived Jainologist Walter Schubring wrote "This fabulous . . to the rule that proves as an exception patt?valT. are mines of reliable dates regarding these chronicles the history of Jain Orders and writings" (1962:68). Such a text, however, can preserve appropriations, as complex as and reformulations reappropriations, monuments in It provides those found the themselves. a series of embedded clues to significant periods of in the Jain community's transformation of its perception as well as a fantastic and fabulistic account monuments of Osia?'s Lawrence Babb origin. The anthropologist has named the various versions of this account he was able to collect "the Osiya [Osia?] legend" in his study in Rajasthan's capital city of today's Osv?l community of Jaipur (1993:9). Babb cites myths as told to him by priests of the Saciy?m?t? temple in 1991 and from printed sources, but he does not make the distinction, as Dhaky did two decades earlier, between Brahmanical and Jain versions (1967:64). He describes the goddess Saciy? in 1991 as "a Jain goddess enshrined at a famous temple at Osiya, and clan goddess n. (kul dew") to many Osv?l Jains" (Babb 1993:9, il.m il. ?> ^ -?S ; sSS...., Figure 6. Mah?v?ra restoring ? Michael temple, its eighth-century W. Meister. modem plan outline. Osia?, of main shrine, Photo: Rajasthan. 9). In addition to using my own observations and interviews over the past thirty years, I have used those of D. R. Bhandarkar (1907, 1909), who, as an visited Osia? early in this century (figs. archaeologist, 2, 4); those of M. A. Dhaky (1968), who visited in the 1950s; and those of my colleagues John Cort (1987; and Lawrence 1991; and personal correspondence) Babb (1993) in recent years, to form an ethnographic in the Jain community's frame for changes perceptions of, and in this to, the Osia? monuments relationship had recorded century. Bhandarkar, for example, Brahmanical rather than Jain versions of the "Osiy? legend" early in this century, at a time when no Jains were (1907:36). He reported that living inOsia? Saciyadev? was thought to be the "tutelary goddess of in the 1950s, the [Hindu] S?rhkhl? Paramaras." Dhaky, found that "Oswal Jains of Saurashtra [in the Indian state of Gujarat] have lost neighboring western [all] memory of the goddess at Osia" (1967:63). Babb, in the 1990s, found lay Jains in Jaipur turning in order to increasingly to Saciyadev? as a clan goddess the R?jp?t nature of their community's to Jainism centuries before (1993).9 Both the Saciy?m?t? and Mah?v?ra temples at Osia? have had interesting histories of use, transformation, and reuse (Meister 1989). The Mah?v?ra temple had reinforce conversion been in the hands of its ritual priests (sevaks) for many centuries before itwas returned to a committee of the in this century. The present Osv?l Jain community Jain a more school was established little than only years ago (fig. 7), well after Bhandarkar's seventy-five visit in 1906.10 The present priest at the temple, who reports that he is a "Brahman, not Jain,"11 has identified 9. R?jp?ts are the warrior (Hitchcock 1959). 10. Personal communication in 1990. Sharma, 11. Bhandarkar Medt? were records "of the sevak communities of western from the pujan, that the pujar?s Br?hmana caste," India Bhanuprakash in the Jain temples and an inscription in of V.S. Meister: Notes and discussions 125 Figure 7. Jain school attached toMah?v?ra temple. Osia?, Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. the temple and the founding of with patronage from a devout an account of Medta-Phalod?, Tirtha Sarvasangrah ("list of Jain recorded that no Jains 1953), which of the reestablishment school the community lay Jain from the town in the Jaina supported holy places"; Shah resided inOsia? at the time of the school's founding, from the town of and that the temple was managed Phalodi.12 Patt?valJ of the The seventeenth-century text is particularly useful in decoding Upakesa-Gaccha of various periods of the meaning and deconstructing in past centuries. Its formulation of patronage at Osia? Babb calls "the Osiy? myth" attributes the founding of Osia? and its "ancient Jain temple" to a the text says, "migrated person named ?hada, who, from a place called Bh?nmal with a large following of Jain relatives and friends" (Hoernle 1890:233-234). at Osia?, Conversion of the Brahmanical population this text associates with the arrival of a Jain however, with 500 followers who, as the sage, Ratnaprabha-S?ri, what in the wilderness, text says, "stayed for a month and . . . but wandered about in the exercise of their calling lived there did not obtain any alms, for the people who were unbelievers" son, (Hoernle 1890:236). ?hada's 1405 ordained from Loke?vara" that "only those Br?hmanas, could serve in the temples who were descended of "P?rsvan?tha and by a snake, was brought back and as a reward: Ratnaprabha-S?ri, poisoned to life by at first [?hada] began to build a magnificent temple for N?r?y?na [a form of the Hindu god Vi?nu]; but what he built in the day, fell in the night. He questioned all the people who saw it;but none was able to suggest a remedy. Then he asked . . . Ratnaprabha the reason why his temple fell down every night. The Guru [Ratnaprabha] enquired, inwhose name he was building it. [?hada] replied, in the name of N?r?y?na [Vi?nu]. The Guru [teacher] said, "thatwill not do; make it in the name of Mah?v?ra [the Jain saint]; then you will succeed."13 The Paft?valf says that Ratnaprabha lived only after the seventy years early Jain sage, Mah?v?ra, whom scholars place in the fifth century B.c. (Schubring this Ratnaprabha 1962:38-39). however, Historically, seems instead to have been a saint living in the twelfth 1967:68). century A.D. (Hoernle 1890:234; Dhaky Neither date approximates the founding of either of the two pilgrimage at The text does, Osia?. temples record details about Saciy?'s however, intriguing to Jain ism that can help us to integrate the conversion text's "embedded history" with the archaeological and record. ethnographic In particular, the text helps us to separate three in the myth of the town of different strata of goddesses Phalaudh?" (1910:63). to Cort, 12. According the past three generations, communication). this same family or approximately has served 100 years the temple (personal for as well as the shrines at Osia?, of the eighth-century in the Saciy?m?t? subshrines and eleventh-century complex, are dedicated to Visnu. 13. Most tenth- 126 RES 27 SPRING 1995 Stew w ? w- ^^ SHHU^^BSr^^^^Pr^^^^^^H^^^^^^^^Hh**^^ Figure 8. The Saciy?m?t? temple-compound, as seen in 1990, set on a hill to the north of the Mah?v?ra temple. Osia?, Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. to Jainism. The first is "tutelary" Jain goddess, who comes with and gives him personal assistance (Cort is Saciy?-"m?t?" ("mother" Saciy?), a 1987). The second first worshiped local mother goddess by the non-Jain Osia?'s conversion Ratnaprabha's him to Osia? residents inOsia? (Dhaky 1967). The thirdwould be Saciya-"dev?" (that is, "goddess" Saciy?), as an It is she embodiment of the Hindu Great Goddess. to Jain worship, learned to who, when converted sweetmeats instead of the crunch on simple vegetarian to the Hindu myth (Hoernle human corpses common 1890; Reu 1948). It is Ratnaprabha's tutelary goddess who tells him that she has "begun to make an image of [the great Jain sage] Mah?v?ra" (by dropping milk upon the ground) 'Worthy of that magnificent building on the hill .. . towards the north of the temple" (Hoernle 1890:236). This seems a particularly ambiguous statement, given the geography of present-day Osia?. The eighth-century Mah?v?ra Jain temple is located on the plain south and west of the Saciy?m?t? temple on its hill (fig. 8). Does the text suggest that the Mah?v?ra Jain ?mage should be worthy of an already existing goddess temple? to the Patt?valT, after the Mah?v?ra According consecration, temple's magical only "some of the were to Jainism (Hoernle say to them: Ratnaprabha O ye faithful, [you] should not go to the temple of Sachchik?dev? [Saciyadev?]; she ismerciless, and incessantly delights in hearing the sound of the breaking bones and the killing of buffaios, goats, and other animals; the floor of her temple is stained with blood, and it is hung about with festoons of fresh skins ... ; she is altogether disgusting and horrible. relatives" of ?hada 1890:237). Only converted then does In fact, the original eighth-century cult image of the hill seems to have goddess on the Saciy?m?t? the Hindu "Great-Goddess" Durg? in a represented transcendent and beatific mode (fig. 9) called in her erect yogic posture to K?emaiikar? comparable that of a Jain sage (fig. 11) (Dhaky 1967). Itwas only in ad. 1178, when the existing goddess temple on the hill was built, that Saciy?m?t? was first represented in the fierce form of Durg? as a warrior goddess slaying the buffalo demon Mah?sa (fig. 10) (Dhaky 1967:66; Handa 1984:222). An inscribed image of Mah??amardin? (Durg? as slayer of the buffalo demon) dated a.d. 1181 from the site of Jun?, donated by a Jain nun, calls her by the name "Saccik?" (Dhaky 1967:69), and an recalls the story of inscription of a.d. 1598 at Osia? conversion from an even of Saciy?m?t? Ratnaprabha's Meister: Notes and discussions Figure 10. An image of a fierce form of the goddess, called Mah?samardin?, as slayer of a buffalo demon from the Siva temple at Bhund?n?, Rajasthan, ca. A.D. 825. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. 127 128 RES 27 SPRING 1995 fiercer form of the Hindu Great Goddess called to C?mund? the Jain practice of crunching on sweetmeats rather than corpses (Reu 1948: 10). In the legend of Saciy?m?t?'s the conversion, Patt?valT records that "the Dev? entered the body of a maiden who was standing near, and thence replied, 'O Lord, Iwanted one sort of thing to crunch and but you have given me another sort'" (Hoernle munch, 1890:238). (Cort By this merging of what A. K. Ramanujan has called "breast" (nurturing) and "tooth" 1987:249) into the single clan (fierce and protective) Mothers the "ambiguous duality" (Babb goddess, Saciy?m?t?, and 1993:13) of the two communities?Hindus been preserved. Saciy?m?t? is both Jain and Jains?has not Jain, "breast" Mother and "tooth" Mother (figs. to nonviolence fierce rededication 9-10). Saciy?m?t?'s to conversion about one community's to it. The those around Jainism and its relationship chronicle of the saints reads as follows: is a statement The . . . said Goddess ["self-existing," to her followers, "listen; whoever of the ?mage of Svayambhu-Mahav?ra you shall worship that found is, the rather than manufactured ?mage of Mah?v?ra], which is set up ?n the city of Upak?sa, and shall follow the ?ch?rya [teacher] Ratnaprabha, and shall serve his disciples and the disciples of his disciples, with him I shall be well pleased, his evils shall I remove, and his worship I shall heartily accept." In consequence Sachchhika-d?v? of [Saciy?m?t?], these words ... a of large number of people . . . adopted the profession of Sr?vakas [followers] (Hoernle 1890:238). The Patt?val? of the Upakesa-Gaccha?as well as the monuments at of sequence archaeological seem to suggest not so much the mass Osia??would to conversion of Osia?'s Brahmanical population as its conversion initiation and into Jain Jainism gradual and rituals. The placid Ksemahkar? ?mage of ?n in installed the Saciy?m?t?'s Durg? temple eighth to century must have seemed not "other" enough conversion this the twelfth of process emphasize by century (fig. 9). Fiercer forms of Durg?, such as C?mund? or Mah??amardin?, could much more practices (as well as "re"-present) the local as the goddess giving up corpses goddess Saciy?m?t? to Jainism by for sweetmeats when she was converted effectively represent Ratnaprabha-S?ri (fig. 10). in A.D. 1178, The Saciy?m?t? temple's rebuilding with an ?mage of Durg? as the fierce goddess ?n ?ts sanctum, may thus have been Mahisamardin? meant ?npart to serve Jain purposes. Through the this reformulation made "Osiya" legend of conversion to both the Jain and Hindu the temple available communities. We know from one inscription at Osia? that, one decade later, the wife of a local landholder named Yasodhara provided a shed on the Saciy?m?t? hill for a chariot for Mah?v?ra (Bhandarkar 1909:110). From another, dated A.D. 1190 (Handa 1984:47), we can confirm that Hindu Br?hmanas were then still Figure 11. An eleventh-century image of the Jina Parsvan?tha from the Mah?v?ra temple at Osia?. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. in Saciy?m?t?'s shrine, as they do today. worshiping The temple that verifies the earliest Osv?l conversion from Hindu practices to Jainism is not Saciy?m?t?'s but rather the one built for the image of the Jain saint, from a cow's milk falling on the Mah?v?ra, generated to the text's story, and discovered ground according by (his s?sana devl). Ratnaprabha-Suri's tutelary goddess The Mah?v?ra temple, built at Osia? in the eighth Meister: Notes and discussions 129 Figure 12. Saciy?m?t? hill, construction of one of nine new subshrines to form ca. 1992. Osia?, an outer ring around the compound, Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. that a significant Jain presence century, demonstrates inOsia? many years before the historically existed verifiable Ratnaprabha-S?ri could have visited Osia? in the twelfth century. Itmay thus, indeed, have been the its rebuilding of the Saciy?m?t? temple, emphasizing use as a Jain shrine, that Ratnaprabha-S?ri precipitated on his arrival at Osia? in the twelfth century.14 The history of Osia? doesn't stop in the twelfth In 1906 Bhandarkar found that "no century, however. Osv?l now passes at Osi? [Osia?] the night of the day on which he pays homage to the m?t? for fear of being overtaken by some calamity" (1907:101). A sense of this decline, and an excuse for it, is given in the Patt?val? text itself, where seventeenth-century that, as a Ratnaprabha's tutelary goddess proclaims result of improper behavior by some of the community: "the town of Upakesa would gradually become [Jain deserted, a schism would arise in the gachchha lineage] and quarrels and the guilds would (Hoernle among the sr?vakas [worshipers], in all directions" be disbursed 1890:239). this is no longer the case. Not only has the been and restored but the temple reoccupied recent in also has, years, Saciy?m?t? temple Today Mah?v?ra 14. Dhaky comments non-violence Ifavoured] that "the general atmosphere of the age Jaina influence and [the] piety of the Figure 13. Saciy?m?t? hill, stairway to Saciy?m?t? temple with new dedicatory gateways. Osia?, Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. increasingly become a prime recipient of Jain lay shrine on the hill is patronage. The present pilgrimage still visited both by Hindus and by Jains, and its trustees are both Jain and Hindu, but the money for recent expansion has come primarily from Jain Nine new goddess subshrines are under worshipers.15 construction, ringing the older temple's compound wall new facilities for pilgrims cover the hill; (figs. 8, 12); and a series of elegant gateways now march up the own set each with its of staircase, Jain dedicatory inscriptions (fig. 13). I think we are seeing is specifically What a reclamation of Osia? by Jain pilgrims. contemporary The Mah?v?ra temple, now recognized within the Jain as western India's oldest Jain shrine, has in community under the animal great Jaina Sage may have ultimately helped compel at the door of Sacciya to stop their violent acts" (1967:68). killers 15. Cort "Saryupari reports twelve such trustees, and that the puj?r?s Brahmans" (personal communication). are RES 27 SPRING 1995 130 Figure 15. Mah?v?ra temple with new entry pavilion and expanded open hall, ca. 1992. Osia?, Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. discussed by Babb (1993).17 The over many centuries and present can well suit Osi?n, Saciy?m?t?, in Jaipur the lay Jain community Figure 14. Mah?v?ra temple, sanctum. Osia?, Rajasthan. Photo: ? Michael W. Meister. recent decades received substantial institutional support from the Anandji Kalyanji trust in Ahmedabad (fig. 15). It now receives as many as 20,000 jain visitors a year. The Saciy?m?t? temple, on the other hand, has increasingly been the recipient of lay patronage. has now changed?in Saciy?m?t? relatively recent a times?from local (s?sana personal goddess being Hindu dev?) serving a variety of resident communities, and Jain, into a much more specific, modern kul dev?, or origination for some of the Osv?l Jains,16 as goddess, she had been early in the century for Hindu Paramaras (Bhandarkar 1907:36). This recent patronage of the Saciy?m?t? temple fits into the "re-imaging" of present-day R?jp?t Jains well (see also Hitchcock clan-origin and multivalent contested that, would be unwise to conclude 16. Babb n. 9). refers to her as clan goddess "to many Osv?l Jains" 1959). Imight warn as history may be, it that such a assertion reflects documentable contemporary history more than a community's present-day longing for an "embedded" past. This kind of art-historical exercise has intertwined several disparate types of sources to reconstruct a at Osia? over many history of Jain use of monuments including today. Is it art history or Imight ethnohistory? As a methodological challenge, end by citing Romila Thapar, India's great ancient centuries, 17. By "re-imaging" Imean the reassertion characteristics follow by Jains who otherwise as documented in Jaipur: practices, of warrior pacific 'Vegetarian" same acts of worship are also reassertions These of a social past. set up shrines to saints as founders of their lineage] #ljains who to a community that sees itself as having come into belong existence learned to respect monks warrior-kings by being From that time forward, the two roles became frozen: warrior-kings the protection of the swords they exchanged healed (1993:9, local warrior goddess inmany guises at the current need by for a "proper" warrior's had when by monks. laid aside 1992:20). for the protection of powerful ascetics (Babb Meister: Notes and discussions historian, from her article on "Society Consciousness": and Historical 1967 Each version of the past which has been deliberately transmitted has a significance for the present, and this accounts for its legitimacy and its continuity. The record is may be one inwhich historical consciousness embedded [or itmay refer to] more externalized . . . [But there] forms. is no evolutionary embedded can consciousness seen be . . .whether introduced deliberately or subconsciously BIBLIOGRAPHY Appadurai, Arjun 1981 Worship and Conflict Under Colonial Rule, a South Indian Case. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Babb, D. Bhandarkar, 1909 R. "Osia." Archaeological Survey of India,Western Circle, Progress Report, 1906-07, pp. 36-38. "The Temples of ?si?." Archaeological Survey of India, Western pp. 1910 1968 Report, Bernard Report, Survey of India,Wesfem 1909-10, pp. 61-63. S. "Ethnohistory," in International Encyclopedia Social Sciences, vol. 6, pp. of the 440-448. Macm iIIan/Free Press, New York. Cort, John E. 1987 "Medieval Jaina Goddess Traditions." Numen 34: 235-255. 1991 "M?rtip?ja in Svet?mbar Jain Temples," in Religion in India, ed. T. N. Madan, pp. 212-223. A. Dhaky, pp. 319-384. L. D. Institute of Dirks, Nicholas B. 1987 The Hollow Crown, Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Geertz, Clifford 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, New York. Gombrich, E. H. (1960) Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology Pictorial Representation, 2d ed., revised. Pantheon, New of York. Guidieri, Remo, and Francesco Pellizzi 1988 "'Smoking Mirrors'?Modern Polity and Ethnicity," in Ethnicities and Nations, Processes of Interethnic Relations in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, ed. Remo Guideri, Francesco Pellizzi, and Stanley J. Tambiah, pp. 7-38. University of Texas Handa, Progress Vidyalaya, Bombay. "TheWestern Indian Jain Temple," inAspects of Jaina Art and Architecture, ed. U. P. Shah and Press, Austin. 1908-09, 100-115. "Medt?." Archaeological Circle, Cohn, Annual Circle, "Some Early Jaina Temples inWestern India," in Shri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya Golden Jubilee Volume, pp. 290-347. Shri Mahavira Jaina Indology, Ahmedabad. 1961 "Monks and Miracles: Religious Symbols and Images of Origin among Osv?l Jains." Journal of Asian Studies 52: 3-21. A. "The Iconography of Sacciya Devi," in Babu Chhotelal Jain Commemoration Volume, pp. 63-69. Babu Chhotelal JainAbhinandan Samiti, M. L. A. 1993 1907 1975 (1986:354-355). Let us, as either art historians or ethnohistorians, crunch on that while trying to restore a sweet living to art. the of corpse body M. Calcutta. 1968 or determined from one form to the other and facets of the continuum Dhaky, 131 Oxford University Press, Delhi. Davis, Richard H. 1992 "Loss and Recovery of Ritual Self among Hindu Images." Journal of Ritual Studies 6: 43-61. 1993 "Indian Art Objects as Loot." The Journal of Asian Studies 52: 22-48. 1984 Devendr? Osian, History, Archaeology, Sundeep Prakashan, Delhi. Art and Architecture. Harlan, Lindsey 1992 Religion and Rajput Women, The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives. University of California Press, Berkeley. Hitchcock, John T. 1959 "The Idea of the Martial R?jp?t," in Traditional India: Structure and Change, ed. Milton Singer, pp. 10-17. American Folklore Society, Philadelphia. Hoernle, A. F. Rudolf 1890 "The Patt?val? or List of Pontiffs of the Upak?sa Gachchha." Indian Antiquary 18: 233-242. Iser,Wolfgang 1978 The Act of Reading, A Theory of Aesthetic Response. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. 132 RES 27 SPRING 1995 Jauss, Hans Robert 1982 Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti with an introduction by Paul de Man. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Kemp, Wolfgang :Art 1994 (review) "John Shearman, Only Connect... and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance." Art Bulletin 76: 364-367. Knapp, 1992 A. Bernard, ed. Archaeology, Annals, and Ethnohistory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kubier, George 1962 The Shape of Time, Remarks on the History of Things. Yale University Press, New Haven. Emiko, ed. Ohnuki-Tiemey, 1990 Culture Through Time: Anthropological Stanford University Press, Stanford. Reu, Pt. Bisheshwar Nath 1948 Report on the Administration of the Archaeological Department and the Sumer Public Library, vol. 21. Government of Jodhpur, Jodhpur. Riegl, Alois 1982 "TheModern Cult of Monuments: ItsCharacter and ItsOrigin," trans. Kurt Forster and Diane G h irardo, Oppositions 25:21-51. Sahlins, Marshall 1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago University Press, 1981 Meister, Michael W. 1976 "JainTemples inCentral India," inAspects of Jaina Art and Architecture, ed. U. P. Shah and M. A. L. D. Institute of Indology, Dhaky, pp. 223-241. Ahmedabad. 1988 (ed.)Making Things in South Asia: The Role of Artist and Craftsman. Department of South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1989 Philadelphia. "Temples, T?rthas, and Pilgrimage: The Case of in Ratna-Chandrik?, Osi?n," A. Agrawal, pp. 275-282. D. ed. Harman Handa "De- and Re-constructing the Indian Temple." Ann 1992 Chicago. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities, Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Island Kingdom. University of Mich ?can Press, Arbor. "The Economics of Develop-man RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 1992): 12-25. Schubring, Walter 1962 The Doctrine of the Jainas. Motilal in the Pacific." 21 (Spring Banarsidass, Varanasi. and Publishing House, New Delhi. 1990 Approaches. Art Shah, Ambalal Premcand 1953 Jaina TTrthaSarvasangrah. Seth Anandji Kalyanji, Ahmedabad. Journal 49: 395-400. Meister, 19831991 1991 Michael W., and M. A. Dhaky, eds. Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, 2 vols., 4 pts. Oxford University Press and American Institute of Indian Studies, Delhi. North India: Period of EarlyMaturity (Encyclopedia of Indian Temple of Architecture II.2). Princeton University Press, Princeton. Michel I,George 1989 The Penguin Guide to theMonuments of India, vol. 1, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain. Viking, London. Nahar, 1918 Puran Chand Jaina Inscriptions, pt. 1. (2d ed. 1983). Indian Book Gallery, Delhi. O'Brien, Jay, and William Roseberry, eds. 1991 Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History. University of California Press, Berkeley. Thapar, Rom i la 1986 'Society and Historical Consciousness: The Itih?sa-Pur?na Tradition," in Situating Indian History, ed. Sabyasaschi Bhattacharya and Romila Thapar, pp. 353-383. Oxford University Press, Delhi. Vashishtha, Neelama 1988 Osia? k? Jain Mandir. Shri Varddhaman Sangh, Osia?. Shikshhan Wagoner, Phillip B. 1993 Tidings of the King, A Translation and Ethnohistorical Analysis of the R?yav?cakamu. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.