Voix et échos du roman-poème en prakrit

The influence of Uddyotana's Kuvalayamala composed in 779 is noticeable in a series of ten long narrative works composed between the 8th and 12th centuries : Haribhadra's Samaraiccakaha (8th c.), Gunapala's Jambucaria (9th c.), Shilanka's Cauppannamahapurisacaria (868), Vijayasimha's Bhuvanasumdari (10-11th c.), Gunacandra's Mahaviracaria (1082), Vardhamana's Manorama (1082), Devacandra's Samtinahacaria (1104), Vardhamana's Jugaijinimdacaria (1104), Shantisuri's Puhaicamdacaria (1105) and Devabhadra's Pasanahacaria (1112). They constitute a particular genre called romance-poem because of the distinctive features they have in common: in addition to devices typical of the kavya style in Prakrit and, for most of them, the alternation between prose and verse, they contain didactic passages borrowed from worldly knowledge and religious discourses expounding the principles of the Jaina faith. However, with the exception of Haribhadra's Samaraiccakaha and Uddyotana's Kuvalayamala, the other nine romance-poems in the corpus have remained un known in literary histories as well as in scholarly works partly because of their language, and partly because of their editions that were restricted to a narrow readership. The first aim of this book is therefore to restore these works to their rightful place in Indian culture and to assess their role in Jaina literature. The other aim is to analyse how the romance-poems composed at a pivotal period that is still poorly understood due to a lack of documentation can shed light on the history of medieval Jain monasticism.

Christine Chojnacki, Professor of Indian Studies at the University of Lyon, studied classical philology (Latin, Ancient Greek) before specialising in Indian studies. She worked on various Jain literary genres (ritual eulogy, invitation letter, biography) composed in several Indian languages, mainly in Sanskrit and Prakrit, but also in Apabhramsa and Old-Gujarati. With Uddyotana's Kuvalayamala "Garland of blue waterlilies", she turned to the genre of Jaina romance-poems in Prakrit. Her study of this work, accompanied by a French translation (Marburg: Indica et Tibetica, 2008) was awarded the Prakrit Jnanabharati International Award in 2013 and also translated into English (Bangalore: Sapna House, 2018). The Kuvalayamala raised Chojnacki's interest in this genre, and when she started looking for related works, she found a surprising number of texts that were badly transmitted and mostly unexplored. The present study is a first attempt at making these poetically wonderful and culturally very rich works accessible to further research.