The King Never Dies

Royal Renunciation and the Fiction of Jain Sovereignty

Bibliographic Data

ID4313667
AuthorsSarah Pierce Taylor (University of Chicago, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume12
Issue11
Pages986
Publication date2021-11-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel12110986
OpenAlexW3213431020
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited30

To theorize Jain sovereignty, this essay takes up Ernst Kantorowicz's underlying query of what happens when a king dies. In turning to medieval Jain authors such as Jinasena, we see how sovereignty and renunciation were mutually constituted such that the king's renunciation completely subverts the problem of the king's death. If the fiction of Jain kingship properly practiced culminates in renunciation, then such a movement yields up a new figure of the ascetic self-sovereign. Renunciation does not sever sovereignty but extends it into a higher spiritual domain. Worldly and spiritual sovereignty share a metaphorical language and set of techniques that render them as adjacent but hierarchical spheres of authority. In so doing, Jain authors provide a religious answer to a political problem and make the political inbuilt into the religious, thereby revealing their interpenetrating and bounded nature

Asceticism · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Renunciation · Sociology · Sovereignty · Theology · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions

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