Jaina Prosopography Database is a project at SOAS University of London. It is directed by Peter Flügel in collaboration with Kornelius Krümpelmann.
The project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust with Research Project Grant 2016-454.
In the last two and a half millennia the itinerant Jaina mendicant tradition exerted an important influence on Indian culture and society. From its region of origin in modern Bihar it spread across most parts of South Asia. In the process it segmented into numerous schools, sects, and lineages, which emerged and differentiated in complex interaction with local social and political configurations.
Considerable advances towards the reconstruction of the history of the Jaina monastic tradition have been made through the publication and analysis of inscriptions and monastic chronicles. Yet, the social history of Jainism remains imperfectly understood. This is because the principal source, a vast corpus of published bio-bibliographical data embedded in manuscripts and inscriptions, has thus far not been systematically investigated.
The need for more historical information on Jaina mendicants, texts and patrons has long been felt. Until the belated publication of Johannes Klatt’s Jaina-Onomasticon in 2016 only data on selected individuals or lineages were published. Klatt’s work offers comprehensive information, but his data needed to be cross-referenced and interlinked. The interrelations and socio-geographical contexts of the documented texts, temples, mendicants and patrons, have never been studied systematically, though suitable materials and analytical strategies are available.
To address this gap, between 2017 and 2020 the Jaina Prosopography Database was developed by the SOAS Centre of Jaina Studies in collaboration with the Digital Humanities Institute at Sheffield University, inspired by the vision of creating a new open access tool for the reconstruction of the social and literary history of the Jaina tradition.
Jaina Prosopography introduces a novel sociological approach to Jaina studies, using advanced digital technology and visualization techniques. Prosopography is a research resource for studying patterns of relationships, based on the collection and analysis of biographical data about a well-defined group of individuals. It is a useful instrument to discern trends and relations that are not clearly visible in large datasets, and enables the socio-historical study of populations, such as the Jainas, which offer a vast amount of scattered biographical information but only few detailed life histories.
Jaina texts present biographical information in formulaic pre-processed formats (birth, family, renunciation, teachers, monastic offices, peregrinations, significant accomplishments & encounters, death, disciples) which are particularly suited to computer-supported analysis. Computer-assisted prosopographical investigation facilitates the analysis and integration of such pre-processed data from hitherto unconnected sources and will be essential for future research of the socio-religious history of the Jaina tradition.
The collation and use of the data assembled in manuscript catalogues and compilations of inscriptions for systematic sociological research is just beginning. In the age of electronic data Sociobibliography, Sociomanuscriptology and Socioepigraphy combined promise to revolutionise the way in which manuscript and epigraphic catalogues and biographical literatures are used. In digitised form the aggregate data embedded in expertly produced catalogues can be used for historical and sociological analysis on a large scale, once the information is transformed into databases that can be used for a multitude of research projects. The approach requires interdisciplinary and international collaboration.
The initial aim of the Jaina Prosopography project was to explore the social background of the Jaina mendicants, their lineages and networks, literatures, religious sites, and patrons, focusing on the nexus of monastic recruitment, geographical circulation of monks and nuns, their biographies and literary production, and patronage of mendicant inspired religious ventures.
A first step was to develop of a new data-model, with an innovative taxonomy, covering the variation in the primary data, a second step to compile a comprehensive database, starting with the data collated by Klatt, and a third step to use this wealth of information for analysis and the discovery of patterns of social relationships on the basis of aggregated evidence from different bio-bibliographical data sources.
A major contribution of the first phase of the Jaina Prosopography project was the creation of tools for mapping and visualisation of complex data and for statistical analysis. The open access database also offers an unparalleled wealth of downloadable historical data.
From the outset the Jaina Prosopography project was conceived as an open ended and collaborative venture supporting multiple future projects. Researchers intent on utilising the database for the analysis of their own data are invited to contact the editors to get access to the data-entry tools. In this way over time a variety of research projects can contribute to the supplementation and refinement of the dataset. Data and visualisations can be freely downloaded, re-used and interlinked.
Jaina Prosopography Database is a project at SOAS University of London. It is directed by Peter Flügel in collaboration with Kornelius Krümpelmann.
The project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust with Research Project Grant 2016-454.