From the time of the Mauryas Jainism was an important factor in the religious life of the area formerly known as Mysore (now Karnataka). The Jains were pioneers in the development of the kannada language, and they contributed greatly to many aspects of the cultural life of the region. This work is the result of the research (for Ph.D thesis of the author) into the religious history of the Jainas in Karnataka who dominated the political and cultural life of Karnataka for about one thousand years during the early medieval period. Based on an analytical study of literary and epigraphic sources, it attempts to explain the prevalence of image worship, tantrism, priesthood and ritualistic formation which characterized Karnataka Jainism in the early medieval period. The book also seeks to examine the social and economic basis of Jaina monasteries in all parts of the Kannada region.

The present book draws attention to the institutional basis of medieval sectarianism and shows that the temples and monasteries became, in the hands of a powerful priesthood, effective means of religious control and publicity. It highlights the increasing patronage extended by heterogeneous social ranks including the landed gentry, moneyed bureaucrats and traders to these institutions. This changed them into big employers and encouraged the growth of feudal ties and manorial interests which the priest of a temple or the superior of a monastery tried to preserve and perpetuate on a hereditary basis.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. How did the patronage activities of India’s Vijayanagara Empire (c. 1346–1565) influence Hindu sectarian identities? Although the empire has been commonly viewed as a Hindu bulwark against Islamic incursion from the north or as a religiously ecumenical state, Valerie Stoker argues that the Vijayanagara court was selective in its patronage of religious institutions. To understand the dynamic interaction between religious and royal institutions in this period, she focuses on the career of the Hindu intellectual and monastic leader Vyasatirtha. An agent of the state and a powerful religious authority, Vyasatirtha played an important role in expanding the empire’s economic and social networks. By examining his polemics against rival sects in the context of his work for the empire, Stoker provides a remarkably nuanced picture of the relationship between religious identity and sociopolitical reality under Vijayanagara rule.