M Whitney Kelting
Biographic Data
| ID | 1443079 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Whitney Kelting |
| GIVEN NAMES | M Whitney |
| FAMILY NAME | Kelting |
| SIGNATURE | KELTING M W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northeastern University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Tracking changes in Jain devotional singing
Over the last two and a half decades of research in the Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jain community in Pune, Maharashtra, I have been in a unique position to track changes in the ways that Jain devotional singing is performed. In order to discuss some observations I have made over these decades, I chose to track some notable consistencies and changes help illuminate the impact of socio-economic conditions on religious practices and musicality of the perf…
Leveraging Agency
Tournaments of Honor
Candanbālā's hair
Jain discourse on the body provides us with an opportunity to examine complex choreographies of ritual acts, which materialize the Jain body. The incipient moment of moving into womanhood is a key place for the materialization of wifely bodies. In order to understand this materialization, we must consider the ways in which discourses (here of wife-hood and nun-hood) shape the transition of Jain young women's bodies into the expected bodies (wives…
Candanbala's Tears
In the oft-told narrative of the Jain sati Candanbala, we see her standing at the door in chains, making an offering of lentils to Mahavir with tears in her eyes. Candanbala's tears, which arise after Mahavir passes by without taking alms, resonate with the Jain experience of worshipping an unresponsive Jina. Jain theology has been presented as anti-emotion and yet, within the most normative strata of the tradition, we find emotions and bhakti de…
Good Wives, Family Protectors
While Jain religious models of virtue articulate the renouncer as the focus of virtue, Jains likewise participate in the western Indian discourse of women's virtue, which centers around the dedicated wife (pativratā) and the virtuous woman (satī). The parole of virtue in Jain dedicatory memorials can be seen as explicitly gendered; lay Jains are represented as the great patron or the dedicated wife. For Jain laymen who cannot be represented as gr…
Idealized Women
Jain women both accept and rewrite the idealized roles received from religious texts, practices, and social expectation. The laywomen choose human – as opposed to divine – women as ideals of Jain piety, especially when the woman's religiosity was rewarded with the health and prosperity of her family. Fasting rituals and both fasting and ordination narratives illustrate the concerns and orthodoxy of many laywomen. However, in fast‐breaking gatheri…
Laywomen's Authority and Jain Theology
The final chapter describes a conflict over the efficacy of a particular formal liturgical worship performance and asks theological questions about the primacy of right thought and right knowledge over right action (here, religious gifting); it highlights the ways that the issues of theology, orthopraxy, authority, and hymn singing are navigated and negotiated by the Jain laywomen in the Parsva Women's Mandal. The women reconstructed this theolog…
Formal Pūjās and Stavan Repertoires
While daily puja is a locus for ritual improvization, the formal pujas are where ritual orthopraxy is circumscribed by shared understandings of the mandal's expertise and authority in the realm of Jain worship. The particular performances of the hymns in the various contexts within the formal pujas articulate the ways the singing collective women interpret both the hymns and the purpose of the formal pujas. Performance choices arise out of the co…
Daily Worship, Improvisation, and Individual Devotion
The women (and men) draw their daily practice from a set of appropriate actions, all of which are called puja. Improvization is framed by the appropriate sentiment of devotion, and the women use teaching puja and discussions of daily puja to explain the relationship between right action and intention. There are specific faults or sins that mark when the worshipper is ’getting it wrong’ and are considered a sign of the wrong religious sentiment. D…
Religious Knowledge and Stavan Collecting
Women learn and transmit new hymns through communities of singers in their natal and affine homes. The hymns are also found in published collections and on recorded cassettes, and the women collect hymn lyrics in notebook diaries. Hymn singing is actively encouraged in daughters who are acculturated into the hymn singing community, which may ultimately afford them a socioreligious community as well as a location for creative energy. Hymn learning…
Hearing and Listening to the Voices of the Śrāvikā
While Jain scholarship has focused on those texts and practices favoring male participation, the Jain community itself relies heavily on laywomen's participation for religious education, the performance of key rituals, and the locus of religious knowledge. Jain laywomen negotiate their Jain‐ness within the discursive arenas of Gujarati–Marathi, Jain–Jain, mendicant–lay, and male–female interactions. A description and history of the primary temple…
India, subcontinent of
The Shapes and Categories of Stavan
The women's categorization of Jain hymns illuminates the content – and performance‐based understanding of the genre. The harmony of a Jain hymn and its poetics, music, and accompanying dance is central to Jain aesthetics. Jain poetry relies on the sentiment of peace for its emotional basis. The careful performances and the attention to the details of performance are a major part of Jain aesthetics and reflect Jain religious values.
Expertise, Prestige, and Authority
Both expertise and prestige are sources for authority in Jain religious contexts. Most religious expertise inheres with the laywomen who teach and monitor the orthopraxy and orthodoxy of children, while the bulk of religious prestige is located in male dominated practices. Jain laywomen negotiate their positions as authorities in public, all‐women contexts, where their expertise is evaluated and where prestige practices have been introduced to ma…
Jaina System of Education
They all contributed harmoniously towards the development of culture as a whole. Necessarily the contributions of these several systems in the field of education were inseparably mixed up
Tournaments of Honor
Candanbala's Tears
In the oft-told narrative of the Jain sati Candanbala, we see her standing at the door in chains, making an offering of lentils to Mahavir with tears in her eyes. Candanbala's tears, which arise after Mahavir passes by without taking alms, resonate with the Jain experience of worshipping an unresponsive Jina. Jain theology has been presented as anti-emotion and yet, within the most normative strata of the tradition, we find emotions and bhakti de…
Idealized Women
Jain women both accept and rewrite the idealized roles received from religious texts, practices, and social expectation. The laywomen choose human – as opposed to divine – women as ideals of Jain piety, especially when the woman's religiosity was rewarded with the health and prosperity of her family. Fasting rituals and both fasting and ordination narratives illustrate the concerns and orthodoxy of many laywomen. However, in fast‐breaking gatheri…
Laywomen's Authority and Jain Theology
The final chapter describes a conflict over the efficacy of a particular formal liturgical worship performance and asks theological questions about the primacy of right thought and right knowledge over right action (here, religious gifting); it highlights the ways that the issues of theology, orthopraxy, authority, and hymn singing are navigated and negotiated by the Jain laywomen in the Parsva Women's Mandal. The women reconstructed this theolog…
Formal Pūjās and Stavan Repertoires
While daily puja is a locus for ritual improvization, the formal pujas are where ritual orthopraxy is circumscribed by shared understandings of the mandal's expertise and authority in the realm of Jain worship. The particular performances of the hymns in the various contexts within the formal pujas articulate the ways the singing collective women interpret both the hymns and the purpose of the formal pujas. Performance choices arise out of the co…
Daily Worship, Improvisation, and Individual Devotion
The women (and men) draw their daily practice from a set of appropriate actions, all of which are called puja. Improvization is framed by the appropriate sentiment of devotion, and the women use teaching puja and discussions of daily puja to explain the relationship between right action and intention. There are specific faults or sins that mark when the worshipper is ’getting it wrong’ and are considered a sign of the wrong religious sentiment. D…
Religious Knowledge and Stavan Collecting
Women learn and transmit new hymns through communities of singers in their natal and affine homes. The hymns are also found in published collections and on recorded cassettes, and the women collect hymn lyrics in notebook diaries. Hymn singing is actively encouraged in daughters who are acculturated into the hymn singing community, which may ultimately afford them a socioreligious community as well as a location for creative energy. Hymn learning…
Hearing and Listening to the Voices of the Śrāvikā
While Jain scholarship has focused on those texts and practices favoring male participation, the Jain community itself relies heavily on laywomen's participation for religious education, the performance of key rituals, and the locus of religious knowledge. Jain laywomen negotiate their Jain‐ness within the discursive arenas of Gujarati–Marathi, Jain–Jain, mendicant–lay, and male–female interactions. A description and history of the primary temple…
India, subcontinent of
The Shapes and Categories of Stavan
The women's categorization of Jain hymns illuminates the content – and performance‐based understanding of the genre. The harmony of a Jain hymn and its poetics, music, and accompanying dance is central to Jain aesthetics. Jain poetry relies on the sentiment of peace for its emotional basis. The careful performances and the attention to the details of performance are a major part of Jain aesthetics and reflect Jain religious values.
Expertise, Prestige, and Authority
Both expertise and prestige are sources for authority in Jain religious contexts. Most religious expertise inheres with the laywomen who teach and monitor the orthopraxy and orthodoxy of children, while the bulk of religious prestige is located in male dominated practices. Jain laywomen negotiate their positions as authorities in public, all‐women contexts, where their expertise is evaluated and where prestige practices have been introduced to ma…
Jaina System of Education
They all contributed harmoniously towards the development of culture as a whole. Necessarily the contributions of these several systems in the field of education were inseparably mixed up
Good Wives, Family Protectors
While Jain religious models of virtue articulate the renouncer as the focus of virtue, Jains likewise participate in the western Indian discourse of women's virtue, which centers around the dedicated wife (pativratā) and the virtuous woman (satī). The parole of virtue in Jain dedicatory memorials can be seen as explicitly gendered; lay Jains are represented as the great patron or the dedicated wife. For Jain laymen who cannot be represented as gr…
Candanbala's Tears
In the oft-told narrative of the Jain sati Candanbala, we see her standing at the door in chains, making an offering of lentils to Mahavir with tears in her eyes. Candanbala's tears, which arise after Mahavir passes by without taking alms, resonate with the Jain experience of worshipping an unresponsive Jina. Jain theology has been presented as anti-emotion and yet, within the most normative strata of the tradition, we find emotions and bhakti de…
Tournaments of Honor
Candanbālā's hair
Jain discourse on the body provides us with an opportunity to examine complex choreographies of ritual acts, which materialize the Jain body. The incipient moment of moving into womanhood is a key place for the materialization of wifely bodies. In order to understand this materialization, we must consider the ways in which discourses (here of wife-hood and nun-hood) shape the transition of Jain young women's bodies into the expected bodies (wives…
Leveraging Agency
Tracking changes in Jain devotional singing
Over the last two and a half decades of research in the Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jain community in Pune, Maharashtra, I have been in a unique position to track changes in the ways that Jain devotional singing is performed. In order to discuss some observations I have made over these decades, I chose to track some notable consistencies and changes help illuminate the impact of socio-economic conditions on religious practices and musicality of the perf…
Sociology (9 works) · Art (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · History (5 works) · Indian and Buddhist Studies (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Hymn (4 works) · Literature (4 works)