Steve Vos (2:16)

Hi everyone. I'm Steve Vos. I'm an assistant professor in the Department of History at University of Colorado at Denver, where I hold the Bhagwan Suparshvanatha Endowed Chair in Jain Studies. Most of my work falls in the realm of sort of lived religions approaches to Jain studies, and I kind of COVID the, I guess, 12th century up to the present. So my first book, which is forthcoming, is called Reimagining Jainism in Islamic India Jain Intellectual Culture in the Delhi Sultanate, forthcoming on Routledge. And my current book project is looking at sort of the effects of globalization and neoliberalism on Jain communities today.

Hitit Jain (3:03)

And.

Steve Vos (3:04)

But yeah, I'm really excited to have worked on this project and is really at the heart of why I got into being a scholar of Jainism in the first place.

Sayona Pugliati (3:12)

Hi, I'm Sayona Pugliati. I'm curator of Textile Eastern Hemisphere for the Fowler Museum at ucla. I research collections at the university Holes basically on textiles from across the world, focusing specifically down the Eastern Hemisphere, which includes Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Pacific. But recently I've also been involved in projects related to materials from the Andes in Latin America and the Caribbean as well. So a huge range of projects. And it's really exciting because a lot of my research started with working with migrant communities in southern India. And I'm really interested in the way that mobile objects created by mobile communities creates the cultural ethos of this realm. So being able to understand that and study that with communities from global perspectives from across the world has been one of my favorite aspects of being a curator at ucla. So, yeah, I was really excited to be part of this project. It was one of my first projects at ucla, at the Fowler Museum. It was really exciting to see the works in person and to really see some of the more theoretical understandings of my research come to life through an exhibition and work with public audiences and see how much of our scholarship can be translated to K through 12 audiences and other just enthusiasts of textiles and other beautiful pieces of art.

Hitit Jain (4:44)

Well, that's amazing. And once again, thank you very much for being here, and I look forward to our discussion. So as this book is a part. Is a result of an exhibition which you organized, so I would be very curious to sort of know the journey behind this book. How. How did you first encounter Chodupatas and what was the exhibition about? How did this book come into its form?

Sayona Pugliati (5:07)

I can start with sort of the background.

Hitit Jain (5:09)

Sure.

Sayona Pugliati (5:11)

So the Falo Museum, Patrick Polk and Amy Landau had applied for a grant with the Lilly Endowment, which was an organization that was really interested in studying lived religion across different global religious perspectives. And so Patrick and Amy Pre Covid had applied to study religious communities and popular religions and lived religions on Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles to really understand how immigrant communities in LA had been creating spiritual life in the city that we live in. Unfortunately, Covid happened and the project had to be, you know, reimagined in different ways. And one of the projects that came about was studying Objects from the Lind collection. And the Lind is a family who had generously provided support and was really interested in the Fowler. And their collection had this spectacular group of chorpatas that we wanted to do something with. So we went through their whole collection. They provided some really amazing insights for us. And at the same time, we didn't really know a lot about these objects, so we wanted to do something that would highlight this really spectacular group of pieces. And we didn't really have a sort of direction at that point. We just sort of were like, these are beautiful. They should be highlighted. And how do we do this? Through an exhibition and digital education platforms. So that's kind of where we started. And there were different aspects of our project with the Lilly foundation and Endowment. So the Fowler actually hosts a number of different projects, exhibitions, digital resources and rotations in our permanent gallery with the funding. And this happened to be the exhibition, happened to be one of the outputs of this project. And the exhibition was received really well by both the Lens, the Fowler and our audiences. And we were approached to write this and produce a scholarly catalog that would allow the exhibition to have a sort of more permanent experience in the world. Exhibitions are very ephemeral and experiential, and that's why they're so beautiful and fun. But it's always nice to have a record of everything that we've done and that sort of process. So that was kind of the journey before the exhibition and what resulted in the book. But then we also wanted. We also knew that we didn't have experts in Jainism at the museum, and most museums don't have experts in all of the things that we're interested in. So we wanted to combine scholarly engagement with community engagement to get a sort of broad perspective of Jainism and the Chodpattas together.

Hitit Jain (8:17)

Right. That's very fascinating to hear with and it sounds really exciting. So to start with the discussion, I would first want to know what does the word chodapatta literally mean? And what are the constituent parts of a chodupatta?

Leena Dhanani (8:32)

Yes. Okay. Well, in scholarship, and we thank specifically Professor Nalini Balbir for her initial work that she did in 2015, noticing Chodpatta's in textile museum exhibits and then writing this first long essay in French. And so we have this idea of a putiu portiu in Gujarati, which means something that it's an object at the back, and it's related to this word that refers to Vaishnava wall hangings. Pitch, vai. These wall hangings are Especially seen in the pilgrimage place of Nattwara. But we sort of have an idea of possible meanings. So, you know, we have the word chord that we've used in the book, and it can mean a plant, a tree, a small bush. If we think of it as chord, then we're looking at the number 14. And maybe that refers to, like, the 14 dreams, symbols that appear on Jane, on these chods. And then we also have a range of verbal meanings that are interesting. So we have chod vu in gujrati, chorna in Hindi, chodai in prakrit, that means to leave, to give up. And we also find in Jaina, Sanskrit, chottayati. So sort of an opening of a book, a knot or something falling or thrown, an object thrown in the back or from above, such as a drapery. So it's interesting thinking through these terms because after going through these images, you know, I tend to think and working with a lot of images that have floral patterns, for example, and a lot of the Images have the 14 dreams, you know, that frame the ch'. Ods. I have been sort of partial to this idea of chaud as a small bush, you know, as a floral patterning, for various reasonings. But I also think that we should talk about how we've defined ch' od in the exhibit. So when we initially were working with these chods, we called them Jain shrine hangings. And I think that came out of Sayona, you can correct me if I'm wrong. Working with the Jain community specifically, and the fact that the chuds that were found in, for example, Dr. J.S. shah's home were found in a shrine setting. So we sort of came up with this idea of Jain shrine hangings. Nani Balbir calls them ceremonial hangings. And that's because when she was working initially with these hangings, they were part of a textile exhibit where they were dealing with more decorative items. And so she emphasized this idea of ceremony and them appearing in ceremonies. And then I also sort of fell upon this idea of sacred shrine, sacred wall hangings, because they don't also appear enshrines. So we've been sort of playing around with how we title and call these hangings, but the actual name ch' od comes from these various definitions. Right. So it's still sort of indeterminate as to which one it exactly is, but I think we could all kind of pick our own that we like.

Hitit Jain (11:50)

Right?

Steve Vos (11:51)

Yeah. One of the things that I noticed is that frequently when you see chod's displayed, it's because they are serving as backdrops for a temporary structure. So as. Yeah, I included a few photos of this in the book. But my real first encounter where I noticed them was when there was an auction being held for the 14 dreams during producin. And they had set up a tent just outside the main area next to the Jain temple in the neighborhood I was living in in Ahmedabad. And there was a monk sitting on a wooden dais and behind him was a chodpatta. And then sort of above him was this kind of canopy piece. And it's important to know that chodpattas are really kind of part of a. A three piece set that includes a canopy that goes up and over and then a front or a torana, which frequently has things like the ashta mangala or the eight auspicious objects in front of them. And so the three pieces there help to create kind of temporary sacred spaces. So when you're doing events to sort of frame the head monk who is overseeing the event, that they're frequently used for that. Sometimes you do see them in shrines. So there's photos that I have of them in, in Himachal Pradesh, there's Jain temples inside the fort at Kangara. And so those, the there, the images actually are backed by jodpattas. So they can be used to create spaces sort of temporarily, or they can be used as kind of shrine backdrops where they seem to be needed.

Leena Dhanani (13:43)

Yeah. And I wanted to add also that when speaking to some of the Jane Leifelk in Southern California, some of them have mentioned, especially in immigrant communities where obtaining an icon is not necessarily an easy thing to do, that the cholpata itself would replace an icon in a shrine in their home shrines. So that's also sort of an emerging thing that had happened in the early 19th, early 20th century, I should say. And then, I don't know, Sayona, maybe you would like to talk about the. The actual structure of a chort, right?

Hitit Jain (14:18)

Yes.

Sayona Pugliati (14:19)

Yeah. I think it's one of the really interesting parts of this project. Just going off of what you both had just been talking about is how the chorpatas become portable shrines in some ways and they become sort of. They function as multipurpose. Right. Like they represent Nikon. Now in diaspora, they also represent the shrine. They come to mean different things as they travel from one side of the globe to the next. And I think that's been really like, to me, very interesting because I sort of started studying this through perceptions coming from the diaspora about these objects and then sort of expanding My understanding by going backwards in time and studying different art objects. But yeah, like Steve mentioned, it's sort of a three part structure in some ways, a sort of, you know, pseudo architectural form is what I called it in the book. And I really noticed how oddly challenging it was to hang the Chorpata in its full form when we were installing the exhibition. And I think that's why a lot of people tend to just have that sort of backdrop piece and not the second and third piece, but essentially there is a piece that hangs on the wall. There's nothing really special about the back. So the back is just a sort of protective layer to protect the piece. And that gets hung to the wall and then extending or protruding outwards is this canopy or Chandarbo, and there's beautiful embellishment on the top of it, but it's not really able to be seen since it sort of parallels the ceiling. And then hanging down is the Toran, which has different elements of spiritual practice and usually references different Jain symbolisms. So that's the sort of main structure of the form. And they sort of center the, you know, person that's speaking or sharing spiritual advice or wisdom. Oftentimes framing a form or statue or icon and usually evoked during ceremonies and more ritual context. But again, in Diaspora, they sort of take a more permanent form in the home. As ceremonies are more frequently celebrated at home and with communities closer by, they're more intimate settings rather than focused in public space. So the shrines in diaspora, especially the ones that we visited in Southern California, were much more ornate than you would see in the sort of shrines or home shrines in South Asia.

Leena Dhanani (17:08)

And it also, in terms of the actual Chod and the way the framing of the chod is typically seen, you have usually not for all of the Chod, especially those in the collection, but we have many that are framed by floral patterning or by the 14 dreams of a Jinnah's mother. And then depending on there's, you know, we have close to what, a hundred children in the Lynn Collection. But usually you'll have sort of the significant character or Jinnah or religious figure in the top or middle top register behind that. And then you'll have sort of other characters in the bottom registers. There are some, let's say, chods that depict place or mythological places like Ashtapada, that have kind of scenes in the mid to lower register. And then more than not, you will have at the very bottom an inscription. A lot of ours are in Gujarati, but also in some of the story chods you have inscriptions that will run throughout. So at the top, in the middle, at the bottom, or the kind of wraparound characters. And so I think that's what's really lovely about the chod is that you see this very unique and creative use of space. Yeah.

Sayona Pugliati (18:26)

And also back to the use of language, obviously there's a beautiful way in which language is given a visual. In the chodes, it's given a design and they're seen as these beautiful artistic forms on the surface as well. And what I thought was really fascinating, again with the pieces we saw in the diaspora, is you're seeing them in English for the first time. And so that takes on a different visual component as well, which I thought was is really interesting. And that helps generations that are born in the US who maybe don't read or write the South Asian languages that Choths typically have, they can feel closer with it because they can actually understand what's being written on the clock.

Steve Vos (19:09)

Yeah. And we certainly notice that as time goes on, the newer ones tend to have inscriptions on the top and the bottom. And yeah, some of the older ones tend to be very brief in their descriptions. Sometimes they'll just mention the patron and maybe the date and where they're from. And the more recent ones will give us a much longer description of the event that they commemorate. So there's so many things going on sort of with and about chodes in terms of not just how they frame space, but sort of what they're for and where they come from too.

Hitit Jain (19:44)

Right. This also leads to like a question about the history of these pattas. Like, so what do we know about the history of using these patas in the Jain community and how far can we trace it back, as you mentioned?

Steve Vos (19:59)

Yeah. So in Nalini Balvir's article, she mentions that there's a 15th century text, actually a couple of them, that discuss that laypeople should give objects to their local temples and that this is sort of part of the regular cycle of how the lay community supports their local institution. And one of the things that's mentioned in there is these canopies, these chandarvos, and it could be just a metonym for the whole three piece set. But very interesting, we have a few examples, very old ones. I think Sayona could tell us more about the dating of the older ones where we just have sort of a plain background, or not really a plain background, but a background where there's not like a narrative being told and it seems to frame the space. And so you'll frequently see Like a scalloped archway with some bulbous pillars just on a velvet background. And then we have others that show, like a seat with some, like, bolster pillows and perhaps a parasol, things like that. And so these putia that Lena mentioned earlier seem to be kind of part of that set, perhaps, and were. Yeah. Sort of used to frame those spaces like we talked about. And it seems like during the early 20th century, maybe the 20s and 30s, that form ends up becoming a platform by which lay communities can commemorate particular fasts, especially, and tell narratives. And there's a very tight connection between the Shwetambra Tapa gach kind of reformist movement that's happening in the late 19th and early 20th century with the kind of the evolution of these putias into chodpattas. So that's part of what I start to discuss in my essay in the book. And I keep working on that. Right.

Leena Dhanani (21:58)

And I just wanted to add. Nilni Belvir also mentions that some of the earliest forms appear in the first quarter of the 17th century. Our earliest piece, I believe, in the Link collection is the Mughal piece that appears in Siona's article, and that we've dated roughly to the 18th century. But it's unclear if it's earlier or later. So there is a kind of need to sort of, you know, further catalog outside of what has already been cataloged to have a greater sense of sort of the periodization of Chod. Obviously, a lot of the chods that appear in our book are from the early 20th century, but. Yeah. So I just wanted to add.

Sayona Pugliati (22:47)

Sure, in a public world, we can go in and do some tests on all the objects and try to figure out.

Leena Dhanani (22:54)

Right.

Sayona Pugliati (22:55)

And date all the pieces, but unfortunately, we don't have all the time. But maybe one day, I think for me, when I was thinking about Wendy's pieces of works sort of emerge, I turn to materiality because you can kind of see, especially through textiles, the influence of fashion and technological production that allows things to become more popular amongst everyday people. So for me, what was really fascinating was to think about the role of velvet in these pieces, because as we've been discussing, textiles being used in religious contexts to sort of frame different aspects of spiritual life is not new at this point at all. And it's pretty common and expected that this would be in. With. In the places that they are. So for me, what was really interesting was this role of velvet. Because velvet is such a thick material, it's difficult to produce. It takes so much silk and labor to make these. And so that's typically why we had only seen up till very, very recently that it was attributed to the wealthy and elite classes and mostly royalty until the 20th century, where technology had advanced and could make and mass produce velvet in a way that still was mostly for wealthier groups of people, but more accessible for the most part. And so you see that sort of desire for opulence to be expressed in the household and in religious contexts and ceremonial contexts. And I think that's what's really fascinating to me. We see that people had a very cosmopolitan understanding of what luxury was and how they wanted to express that in their sense of devotional life. And I think that's what's really interesting and unique to me about this collection in particular, and the chords that are very similar to it as they emerge in this time. So, yeah, in terms of when they actually started coming up, I mean, there's different moments in time we can attribute them to. There's a few manuscripts, Jain manuscripts, that had these sort of velvet covers with Sardozy embroidery on them. So we can think about whether or not those are connected, likely. So because there is this sort of genealogy of visual language that is being shared amongst across time essentially. But I don't think we can say exactly when these sort of emerge. I think this is a sort of understanding of what is supposed to be in devotional spaces and how artistic intelligence and tastes and trends are all confluencing together to create new and more exciting forms of devotion.

Steve Vos (25:49)

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Hitit Jain (26:18)

Yeah, that's interesting. And you mentioned the use of weld weight and the use of Zardozi. So what, what are the other materials which are used in the production of Achora butter which make it distinctive? And what is the significance of these special artisanal forms like Zardozi in the making of Machot butter?

Sayona Pugliati (26:40)

Yeah. And the ones in the Lynn collection are typically all with velvet backings on the surface or sort of surface velvet. And the backs are usually cotton or silk sateen sort of not super significant material, but something that is easy to Access easy to stitch together and easy to keep on a wall. And then the front surface is embellished with, as I mentioned, zardozi, which is this type of embroidery in which a fabric is stretched on a wooden form and then a needle is sort of going through it with different materials. And typically we use the zari thread, which is used to be a gold thread. Zari means gold and. Or a silver thread because silver withstands a lot more, it has a lot more strength to it than gold does. But recently we mostly see copper with silk attached to a silk thread that is easier to use, easier to maneuver, and cheaper in general. But the real auspicious quality of gold and silver is maintained in the earlier forms. And in addition to that embroidery, we see lots of sequins, lots of beads, glass, and some other really interesting materials show up, such as yak hair or beetle wings or the casings of beetle wings that allow for different dimensions to be approached on the velvet. Velvet is quite thick, as I mentioned. And so when you're couching materials onto the fabric, you want things that also sort of fight back against the dimensionality of the velvet. So more three dimensional objects often produce a better visual effect. And especially in contexts where everything is lit by fire or it's more likely to be lit by light that isn't stagnant, it creates this like really dynamic visual effect that I think is really powerful and people really enjoy.

Hitit Jain (28:50)

Right. You also, you also described the usage of elytra in, in the Chorpattas. So I would be very interested in knowing how, how does elytra is helpful? How is elytra helpful in the captivating glimmer of the chodpatas? And how do these chodpatas act as what you call multi sensorial sides of devotion?

Sayona Pugliati (29:16)

Sure. I mean, I think the elytra is an example of one of the many materials that are used that are really exciting to me and display that sort of artistic intelligence needed to be like, oh, like what would make a jewel glimmer, you know, in, in a piece that is covered in metallics and fine embroidery that shines and does a lot of different dynamic visuals. Like what could I add to this that would just like blow it away and make people focus on something so small but so powerful. And I think that to me is why the Electra is so amazing and genius. Because they're quite small in the overall piece, but once you notice them, they're just, you can't forget about them. They're placed as jewels on the jewelry of the two adherents on the piece that I describe in my article. And again, they're really small, but the first time I saw them, I was blown away and then couldn't forget about them. And during the exhibition, I would always ask people, if you can find the beetle wings, you've won. And it was really exciting to watch students really search for things and really look for the materials. And I think that that's what, to me, is really exciting about those pieces. But, Lina, did you want to. You also talked about them in your essay, so I don't know if you wanted to add anything. Thing.

Leena Dhanani (30:43)

Yes. Well, it's. You know, there is a statement in working with these, the artists and with the design of Chaud that the more glimmer, the better, you know, and there's something very special about bringing a material object that is usually in the background, right, and bringing it to the forefront in an exhibition where you can think of perhaps more deliberately about how the intention behind the creation of it, you know, how maybe it was meant to stand out. And I think there's the glitter and there's the various things in the object that make it glittery, right. But there's an intended effect. And that's why I had named my article from Chamakti, Chamatkara, because there is this idea of one. These ideas or objects or stories flashing out and pulling the viewer into them, right? So we have this idea of sparkle, glitter or flash or a gleam or brilliance or splendor, and then sort of the aesthetic effect of, like, surprise and wonder. And most definitely, I think, Siona, when we first looked at them together, there was this kind of awe experience of seeing them in person, right? And then you're just drawn to the details. And I think this is where it gets very interesting, because, first of all, for example, you can see how artists used glimmer to maybe highlight certain aspects of the visuals as opposed to others. So if you look at some of the Cholbhartas on Kshatrunjaya, some of them highlight the tops of the temples, you know, on the top of the hill, mountains. And it seems like those are the only ones that get, like, the largest sort of glimmer effect of gold and shine, whereas others highlight the path of the pilgrims. And so it seems that, I mean, not only was there sort of this overall sort of desire to sort of bring in the viewer, right? And to the viewer to experience a kind of awe and wonder that I do believe leads to a kind of devotional sentiment, but I think that they played with where they place that type of shine. Within the pata, you know, because there's different aspects. I mean, if you're walking up, you know, Kshatrunjaya, the path to Kshatrunjaya, there is this sense of anticipation. Right. Of what's to come, or there's just the splendor of the temples on top. And sometimes we even get sort of celestial beings, you know, shining from the top of these pattas where these vimanas, you know, these celestial vehicles are sort of decorated, highly decorative and you know, we have this elevation or this sort of emphasis on heavenly perspective or something like that. But also I wanted to mention that in the charitas, medieval charitas or stotras hymns, or in praise of temples and places, often things that are made out of jewels and gems and that are golden. Right. Something is considered, something that's opulent and beautiful is considered celestial. And so there is this attempt, I think, I would argue, to recreate this kind of atmosphere through colored thread, through sequins, through real gold and silver. And perhaps there's a sort of lineage to be created between the chor and paintings which I know that we're going to get to just Jain material culture. Right. And how glory is kind of shown through materiality.

Hitit Jain (34:21)

Sure. At the same time, I think while we discuss the aesthetic value or its awe inspiring beauty of chorupatta, as you mentioned, Leena, it's also important to note the religious significance of these banners which are in continuous use by Jain communities of today. So what do we know about the religious usage of Chorupattas within Jain communities? And to follow up on that, what is the objective of commissioning a chodpatha or gifting it to a monk or a temple? What is the purpose behind it?

Steve Vos (34:54)

So yeah, as I mentioned earlier, chodpattas are, especially in the sort of more recent decades, have taken on a kind of a register of commemoration. And so frequently, especially in the last few decades, they tend to commemorate women's fasts.

Hitit Jain (35:12)

Right.

Steve Vos (35:13)

And so yeah, what we frequently see sort of in the inscriptions of these chodpattas and very much related to the visual programs that are there, we see repeated visual themes. One of the most popular ones is the scene of Shreyam's Kumar breaking the fast of Rishabnath with the sugarcane juice. And so this visual, like if you just walk into any Jain space and you see this hanging on the wall, you know, when you're 40ft away, you will know right off the bat that like the purpose of that chodpatta was to commemorate someone completing the varshita Right, the year long fast. And so as you start to read these inscriptions alongside with these visual programs, you see that there is a way that these are commemorating especially lay women's fasts. Sometimes they commemorate fasts that go along with taking diksha. Right. So we have at least one in the collection that tells us about two lay women who are probably like maybe a mother in law and daughter in law perhaps who end up becoming nuns after they complete a number of fasts. But yeah, very commonly these fasts were undertaken for kind of the well being of a woman's husband. And this gets into a lot of things about like the pati vrata and so bhagavati kind of discourses there, like what is a good wife in the Jain tradition? And this is sort of a discourse that goes beyond just Jainism, right? We see this in Hinduism and other traditions in South Asia. But these fasts are undertaken and very often for the benefit of a woman's husband and sort of her own benefit in that way. Because traditionally, Jane, lay women don't work outside the home, right? Which is not to say they don't work, but they don't work outside the home and for wages and things like that. And so to provide for your own wellbeing is to sort of support your husband's wellbeing and that of your children. And so what I noticed is that commissioning a chod is in some ways it's commemorating the completion of a fast and it's usually given on the day of the completion ceremony or completion rites. And so, yeah, you'll see a lot of these like Udyapan Nimitte, right? Like sort of on the occasion of the completion of this fast. And giving that chod to the temple community is an act of dan, right? It's an act of sort of religious giving that is sort of the proper motivation, especially for laymen in the Jain world, sort of traditionally speaking. And so we kind of see an economy of merit or punya going on here where a woman performs an act of tapas, of asceticism that benefits her family, the chodpatha sort of commemorates that act and, and kind of extends her, her act in, into the whole community. And so if you were to say go into a neighborhood temple in, I don't know, Pune or whatnot and see these chodpattas and realize like, oh, the women in this community do a lot of fasting. And kind of a hilarious story came up about this. While I was doing the research for this paper, I was talking to a Jain woman who lives here in Colorado, but she's from Delhi and she's a degumbar. And the first thing she said to me is, oh, those Gujaratis, they do so much fasting. And it was just like a real moment where like actually it clicked for me, like, oh, right. Like this is in some ways like displaying the community's piety. And that really relates to the relationship between mendicant communities and a particular lay community, that if you are a very pious community, this can be one of the ways that you would attract, you know, high ranking monks in your order to come and spend chaturmas with your community. Right. For the rainy season retreat. So, yeah, there's a lot of ways that sort of the object helps to kind of bring the community together and to show off sort of the piety of so many individuals who make up the community, both through sort of women's acts of asceticism and through traditionally men's acts of sort of commissioning and having these objects made. And I think that with all the wonder that is evoked in the, the visual of the object, we also can recognize that velvet is a very expensive material, that the Zardozi, where you have gold wrapped thread, is an expensive material and that the expense of it is actually part of it. And I think that when it comes to, you know, the discourses in religion are still in so many ways really plagued by the idea that money is bad. And I think that a lot of the research that has been done in the last sort of 20 or 30 years in Jane's studies is really helping us to sort of break out of that mold and to see that like, the proper use of money actually has a lot to do with like what is considered to be religiously good and so many other traditions.

Hitit Jain (40:04)

Yeah, that's, that's quite interesting. And it also leads us to it. It also shows another aspect of Jain community. It's materialistic, well being its material, its material success. And I mean, this is also visible in the Chodbhattas because the use of precious materials and production of such patas with zardozi, with velvet, it does present a picture of opulence. So how do you think this opulence work in tandem with the piety or devotion of ascetics in householders? And what kind of contrast does it create within the Jain community?

Leena Dhanani (40:41)

I mean, I think Steve can speak to this. I just wanted to mention that in the 20th century there are specific business families that have been known to contribute to the production of Chod. Right. We have the Sheth family in Ahmedabad, Popatlal Darcy and Jamnagar, Nagin Das Sheth from patan, like the 1950s. And there is this sense generally, right, of punya and papa. Papa and karma. And that if you have good punya, right, it shows up in sort of, you know, wealth and distribution of wealth. And that distribution of wealth brings about punya, and it increases one's wealth. Not that that's the goal per se, but that's part of the whole mechanism. And so I think that that's part of it, Right. That that type of opulence is, as Steve had said, Right. There's a definite kind of religious purpose to opulence and wealth. And. Yeah, I think I'll let Steve continue.

Steve Vos (41:49)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think this comes down to a really important idea for a lot of lay change, which is Prabhavana, or the glorification, the outward glorification of the tradition and that. Yeah, it sort of has all sorts of dimensions to it. Right. It can be manuscript recopying, commissioning art, sponsoring temples. Right. Sort of all the things that go into temples, Images, other kinds of textile objects, all the ways that these things are beautified. Right. When you hear people, like, chanting anumodhana at an auction or to praise someone. Actually, the Colorado community right now is having their own temple built. And so every day in my WhatsApp feed, I'm seeing 30 objects, 30 photos of them, starting to have the.

Leena Dhanani (42:40)

The.

Steve Vos (42:40)

The shrine built that's being done in Rajasthan right now and being shipped over here to Colorado. And everyone just says abhinandan and Adumodana, Right? And so this is like a celebration of the increase in the good that is. That is sort of being about the appropriate use of one's wealth for the good of the community. So I think, yeah, so much of this has to do with, like, who is like, a good layman and. And increasingly a good lay woman who has the wealth to support the community. Some of our bigger donors here in Colorado are women who've sort of had their own careers and are using their money to help bolster the community as well. So, yeah, I think it's really interesting to see how this forum is evolving along with sort of the changing circumstances of the Jane communities. And who can be a good donor and who's a good support for the community.

Hitit Jain (43:33)

Great.

Leena Dhanani (43:33)

Yeah, that's a good point. Who can be a good donor? You know, it'd be interesting to sort of map out where these major donations come from, from the ones that we already know, because it's not the case that every Jain community commissions a chod, you know, so there are traditions within families and with monks asking for the commissioning of chods too. Right. Especially at the end of a fast over religious event. And I do believe it appears in some of our inscriptions that certain monks and nuns have, you know, requested laity to commission achod to be made.

Steve Vos (44:11)

Yeah. I think the phrasing in the inscriptions is something like under the auspicious guidance of this person's direction. Yeah. But yeah, really interesting to see. Right. This is mostly a shvetumber and even really a tapa gach kind of phenomenon and its origin. Yeah, but what's, what's really interesting to me is that when the, the digumbra community here in Colorado did their snatropuja for, for the end, at the end of Daslakshina, they actually hung up the achodpatta behind it to create.

Hitit Jain (44:41)

They used chodpatta. Yeah, because I have never seen it in India. Like.

Steve Vos (44:45)

Right.

Hitit Jain (44:45)

Yeah, no, it was total innovation until very late.

Steve Vos (44:49)

So yeah, so yeah, my, my good friend Neha Jahveri, she lent her chodpata, she's a shwetambar. She lent it to the digambar community, help frame their space. It was a nice. Yeah, definitely a new thing.

Sayona Pugliati (45:03)

When we had the exhibition up at the Fowler, the amount of people who are Jane lived in India and in the US who mentioned that they had never seen it displayed or that they had a lot of these or not a lot, but like they had them in their, you know, under the bed or in a closet somewhere. Never like really understood what they were or like knew they were special obviously, but they were like just sort of things that they inherited from grandparents or something. But yeah, I, I really specifically remember the amount of people who were like, I've never seen this in India. Like all of a sudden in the U.S. they're like, you know, at all these ceremonies and, and in people's homes.

Leena Dhanani (45:45)

So that was, you know, there was a lot of reflection about this and I think I mentioned this. So I had mentioned, um, one Janeway woman came up to me and mentioned that, you know, the chodpatha is hanging in her home and she doesn't pay attention to it, but she knows that if it wasn't there she would miss it. Which I thought was very striking because it kind of gestures to like the objectivity of the chod, you know. But I am happy to say, and maybe this is an outcome of this exhibition and all of our hard work is that Naani Belbir did tell me that Devrang Nanavati, who still produces chods in Surat today at his company after the Jain Digest had an article about the UCLA Fowler exhibit, that there has been an increase in commissions for chodz.

Sayona Pugliati (46:42)

Hey.

Steve Vos (46:42)

All right.

Leena Dhanani (46:43)

Yes.

Hitit Jain (46:44)

You are reviving. You are helping revive. Helping religious practice to revive and become more popular after all.

Sayona Pugliati (46:51)

Yeah.

Steve Vos (46:52)

I mean, I will say that since the word got out that I'm doing research on these, there have been a number of lay women here in Colorado and elsewhere who just like can't wait to show me their toads that were either belong to their grandmother. Right. And they are. They're mentioned there just like as one of the grandkids in the bottom inscription, or it's for themselves.

Hitit Jain (47:12)

Family had a different kind of thing.

Steve Vos (47:14)

Yeah, yeah. There's all sorts of new forms. Like they're being done in green now and the 14 dreams are being done in sort of like a flower petal shape with like four petals coming off a center thing. So there's. It's like a really innovative kind of art form. And I've noticed that some of the later ones now also are using sort of multicolored beads and. And sequins and things. You get like pinks and purples and blues and not just sort of the. The gold and silver not really break.

Hitit Jain (47:43)

What I mentioned was that there were specific families, I'm assuming affluent and more prominent families to whom the monks also made requests about, you know, commissioning chodipatas. So do we find any sort of evidences for attempts at making chodbattas distinctive, like producing chodpadas in a way that it distinctively represents that house or that lineage? I mean, that might not be the case, but I'm just curious about it.

Leena Dhanani (48:15)

I think that. Yeah, go ahead, Steve.

Steve Vos (48:17)

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I just know there's three in the Lind collection that are in blue velvet and all of them were made between 1975 and 1976 in Surat. And it seems that it was like very specific for a visit of a very high ranking monk by the name of Vijay Ramchandrasuri. And that his lineage had a lot to do with sort of.

Leena Dhanani (48:40)

Yeah.

Steve Vos (48:40)

Kind of invigorating the pious performance of fasting. And I would say early on, like you see men commemorated for fasting as much as you do see women, and sort of as time goes on, it becomes much more of a woman centric sort of place to commemorate that that fast. But yeah, I think that there's like ways it gets connected to region, where it gets connected to, yeah. Families and lineages that way. For sure.

Leena Dhanani (49:05)

Yeah. It is difficult to sort of answer this because there are sort of the money that's allocated, so the money they have to actually commission makes a big difference on what is actually possible to commission. Right. There are templates. So if you look at some of these artists, they're working off templates that they've used. Now the donor, you know, the person who's commissioning this could say, I want this, I want this and you know, this, or I even want this temple. You know, we do have like local temples represented on Chodz, but we also have to realize that yes, we do have a material maybe distinctiveness of certain Chods with certain families, but that there is an individual preference. And it also has to do with how, how much money they have and how much money they can put into the Chod. Right. So there will be a discussion about this. And so it's an interesting question because I think that's something that could open up a new avenue for research.

Hitit Jain (50:05)

Right?

Leena Dhanani (50:06)

Yeah.

Hitit Jain (50:07)

Well, another thing which, like, to be honest, the most fascinating part of the book was the chorputas themselves. And I went through them and looked at them again and again and they were, they were amazing and they were beautiful. But one thing which I felt was that these chodupattas, when someone looks at them, they do not just evoke one's senses. Their highly adorned nature also causes an immersion, like a sensorial immersion. So what do you think? How do you think that happens and what is the objective? Because I think it can also be related to how Jain temples are beautifully adorned, whether Dilwada, Khajura. And that causes a sensorial immersion. And contrary to what one believes, it does not really cause a sense of tranquility. It makes a person more overwhelmed. So why does that happen and what is the purpose?

Leena Dhanani (51:02)

I mean, I think that that comes down to the argument in my article that there is a way it's sensorial in a sense, that there's touch and there's sight. Right. But we're talking about also three dimensional memory and imagination. So many people have, for example, gone to some of these pilgrimage places, right. Or they have icons or they're devoted to Parshvanatha. We have some beautiful images of Parshvanatha, some that appear in story form, some of that are just, you know, the Jinnah in the center and we have Kamat at the top and Darendra and Parmavati at the side. But I think that it is actually twofold. I think that there is this astonishment, this kind of perhaps the capacity for the Chod to even have them look at it from a different perspective. You know, maybe delight in some aspect of a religious figure or place in a way that they can do it because one, they might have seen it or they have a traditional tie to this place, but seeing it in this Chod environment allows them to connect to it differently, right? There has to, I think there has to be some sense of newness also as well as what is traditionally understood in Indian aesthetics of having a knowledge, right? Being a kind of cultivated reader or thinker or experiencer of an aesthetic object. And so you have a memory of these places. But then the great thing about the Chod is that it can creatively reimagine these places and emphasize certain things that bring about this reconnection, right? I don't think that. I think that there's different kinds of wonderment. And I think, for example, if you're looking at a Chod that has a Jinnah, for example, you have the Parshvaranth image that was actually on the front of that Jain digest where my article had appeared, you know that it can be magnificent and beautiful as well as peace giving, right? There's also an immersive quality with the way characters are portrayed on this. So we have the story Chods and one story that appears is the bull and the root, where we have this tale that has been documented in Haribhadra's Yoga Bindu from the 8th century of a woman who turned her husband into a bull. And what's beautiful about that image is you have this large vimana, right, that is framed by the tree under which the wife eventually looks for an herb to change her husband back to into human form after overhearing the discourse by these celestial beings on the Svymana. And that way of immersing you is sight. You know, this idea of Darshana is so important in Indian traditions, but with the eyes of the celestials looking straight at you and witnessing, knowing, almost having this conversation with you of them witnessing the event, knowing you're witnessing the event. And so I think that there are these sort of material, creative ways to draw in the viewer, right? But it has, I do think it is linked to memory and imagination. And you can either, you know, that from being born in a Jain family, there's also cultural situatedness from just seeing these things and, you know, growing up in particular places, you know, like if I. I've shown these children in my introduction to Jainism classes, where I've had students take these classes because their friends were Jain. Right. But they grew up in Rajasthan and they've seen some of these mandiras, these temples. And so I think it's really important to think about the. The imaginative and memory backdrop that these children are appearing in. Yeah.

Sayona Pugliati (54:53)

And just to follow up on that, I think it's really amazing how captivating they are to so many different audiences. I mean, familiar or unfamiliar, they're just like. Once you start looking at them, you really can't look away. There's something about them that just, like, pulled you in so tightly. And I mean. I mean, when I. When the exhibition was up, like, I could stare at those forever. I don't know how. I mean, I. I can speculate on how they do that because that's what I do. But. And that's what I think about. But it is, like, spectacular. They're just piercing in a way that is just mesmerizing. And I think that just allows a further meditation on the ideas that are being presented. And like Leena said, there's something about memory and like, this sort of dreamscape that they create that takes you into the stories that they're telling, the places that they're that representing. And there's this, like, whimsical experience that you have with them that becomes a form of devotion. And it kind of allows you to escape from the worldly place that you're in by thinking about this other thing that is. It's allowing you to journey with yourself. And there's something just really fun about that kind of visual narrative. And I think there's something about how you can't really read it left to right or any straightforward way. There's essential aspect that grabs you and pulls you in and then takes you through the story through different ways. And there's this, like, very, like, different type of movement when you're sort of quote, unquote, reading the story through that motion, Right. Where you're not starting from one place and getting to another. You sort of start with something that you're familiar with or, you know, the central axes of the story, and then you can sort of explore as you go, but you also might not know. And I think there's something really exciting about that sort of narrative approach. And it's not just specific to these Chods, but you see that coming through on a lot of different narrative textiles across South Asia, where the story is the journey, and you sort of are taken through that visual if you allow yourself to. And I Think there's this. And I think also when you think about how these stories are perceived and interpreted differently as they move around textiles, as they move around, sort of collect different interpretations, and the story changes as they move through different places. And there's something really exciting about how all of those pieces fit together and start allowing the viewer to just have a more open sense of what the story is. And every time you approach it, like, maybe, you know, the plot, but the specifics start to change and the characters, the good guy and the bad guy changes depending where you are, who you.

Leena Dhanani (57:46)

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you said that. There is that. And you also kind of highlight an important point about just the nature of viewing in the Indian aesthetic context, because it is supposed to take you out of sort of a worldly predicament, you know, in terms of, like, where your eye is captured. For example, when you're talking about the dreaminess, there's that beautiful image of. Of Trishala at the center of the pakta. And she's sleeping, you know, and she's having the dreams of the 14 dreams. And there you have these waves of gold and silver thread coming out, which literally signifies this kind of dreamy, you know, dreamscape, which is one of my favorite chodpattas. But in terms of focusing your attention on a chod, there is a framing where some of them, you have a singular figure in the center. And this goes to also its relationship to Indian painting, because there's a sort of framing with Indian sculpture and painting where you look at registers of text, you look at registers of story, right? And you would read it in a particular direction. And you can actually see that reflection in cholpattas, too. Well, you'll have a central figure often, at least from my memory of the ones that we have in this collection, you know, the story begins somewhere in the top, and then it meanders, and it comes through. And typically there's some kind of climax or some kind of problem or some kind of, you know, if a character is, you know, like one of my favorite is. I had tagged it here Bunker Chul, right? He was a robber and his former name. So he was the foremost among the crooked. And it talks about how, you know, he was going to rob, go out for robbery, and him and his friends pass a forest. And he does remember, like, from a monk telling him to not eat fruits at certain times, that he shouldn't eat fruit, but his friends do, and they die. And then he goes on further, and he ends up appearing in a palace and et cetera, et cetera. But you can kind of see where the story started, starts at the bottom, and the complications sort of appear in the middle towards the end. We have. And I think that's kind of the nice thing about Chod is that you can see those registers that mimic kind of Indian painting. But then you see a lot of creativity. You know, you can see sort of framing that's not just kept on the side, but there's another one of a sadhvi, I think, Chandbala, where the paisley frame kind of envelops the actual characters in the center. So I think each one kind of beckons us to look at it differently. But you are drawn to. There are kind of similarities with painting, and then there's also differences because of the variety that you find in Chod.

Steve Vos (60:40)

Yeah, Actually, one of my favorites works kind of in the opposite direction. It's the very famous story of Sripal, right? He's sort of one of the great laymen stories. But this tells the. The moment where he's thrown overboard by his. His, like, ne' er do well, nefarious business partner. And due to his piety, sort of taught to him by his wife, right. He rides a crocodile to shore, and he passes out right there on the shore. And in this particular toad, right. It names the place, right. It's just north of Mumbai. And so, yeah, this is how the story is, like, deeply localized through these Chods. And you sort of get a sense of, like, of the tons and tons of stories that you could find in texts, which ones actually matter to people on a fairly regular basis. And so you see how something like the Sripal story, which becomes really like the basis for actually several of the Chods here. Right. It kind of finds its, like, highly localized ground in some of these, too.

Hitit Jain (61:43)

Yeah, that's in a way, conveying or creating an impression of collective religious memory through an artistic form. Like, it's conveying that religious memory through a very immersive, artisanal form.

Steve Vos (61:57)

Yeah, definitely.

Hitit Jain (61:58)

Right now, also, because we are talking about the aesthetic importance of chodpatas. So where would you place these chodpatas in the development of Western Indian paintings? And what kind of innovations do we see over a period of time in the development of these panels?

Leena Dhanani (62:15)

I think it's interesting that if we place or if we think of the chodpattas or the earliest. And I'm saying this, you know, with what we evidence we have in the early 17th century, more or less, we also have wonderful sort of beyond sort of the Early Jain paintings and the 14th 15th centuries. Right. And so the first connections I made when I was working with Cholpattas was sort of those. And it's because I also worked on Ashtapada. But you find these images like The Ashtapada, this 14th 15th century painting that's found in the Victorious Ones catalog, is kind of a template for the way I was looking at some of the Astapada chodas that appeared in the Lind collection. And so you actually have similar ways of depicting scenes like Ashtapada, even Gautama trying to climb Ashtapada. Those at the bottom, the yogis at the bottom. Sometimes they're appearing in yogic poses. Sometimes there's the scene where he comes down and he's giving them gruel to break their fast. But there are immediate connections to painting. And so I think that you can also find the connections with the Chojon Jinas. Right. What's interesting about some of the yantras that appear on these chods is that they seem to include or at least. Steve, I don't know if you agree with this. Sometimes you have the sense of the donors appearing with the lay disciples that are at the bottom of the yantra in the register. Right. Which is something I don't necessarily see in painting. Yeah. So I'll let Steve continue and then I can probably also pick out a few other examples.

Steve Vos (64:04)

Yeah. I mean, you definitely get the use of characters and sort of like lay people as stand ins for those characters. So with like the, the five knowledges. Yeah. And like the Siddhachakra yantras, you see Sripal and Maina Sundari sort of standing on either side of it. Like, you see the way that like the lay couple who are sort of participating in that particular fast are sort of like written in that way. And you see a few other examples of this in some of the other chodes, especially for like Gyanpani knowledge. Fifth, where you see like the famous scene of the, the monk teaching the. The idiot kids. Right. That even this monk can sort of make these like, not so bright children into like fairly pious and upright folks. Right. And so there really is a kind of a way that people like put themselves into the stories. And then there's even a few forms. Like we have the Karnama Chudana tree, John. So we have like this lay couple who are like, with their axes and they're cutting down the tree and all of the branches on the tree are different forms of pop. Of sort of negative karma. Yeah. So, yeah. All sorts of ways that these sort of work back and forth that sort of put the people who perform the events that they commissioned or that they commemorate into the commission. They put themselves in the stories.

Leena Dhanani (65:33)

I also wonder if it's possible to think about this in terms of. I mean, I don't know if this is. I'm sort of just throwing this out here because I've been thinking about it. But we have sort of these paintings, right? And we have to think about where they're commissioned and the patronage behind them. Because there are sort of royal or quasi royal settings for these paintings. And so we definitely have replicas in the Chod, right? Especially the Kshatranjaya, the pilgrimage Parthas. But I wonder if we could also think of this in the vernacular, that there's something that the Chod offers by a kind of localized vocabulary that it gets to use by being able to place and replace different characters for different stories. So that a more localized tradition is brought about, right? That it's given more voice and more creativity. And you know, where we have the Mogolpata, right? And we don't know where it was located. Like, that's the problem. We don't know where some of these were actually hung. So we can't say was that actually commissioned for a specific, you know, royal, quasi, royal place. But there is something that uses perhaps even the way characters are looked like in painting, right? There are crossovers sometimes in typologies, but in the framing of it, especially with the stories, the story pattas, you know, you have a lot of characters who are fulfilling. They're undergoing their karmic experience, right? So, like, for example, we have the account of Muni Mithraya, and it depicts his unfortunate experience at the hand of a goldsmith, you know, where he's accused of stealing gold. And then that kind of destiny plays itself out and we get an interesting way the narrative moves through the Chodpatha. But I think that we could maybe think about this. You know, we can think about places of high patronage versus more localized patrons, which we do have, literally in the inscriptions, and what kind of vocabulary and visual vocabulary that brings about.

Sayona Pugliati (67:36)

I think what was most striking to me is just being able to see those similarities and just thinking about, too. Just conveying what is on a painting in the form of a textile is an immense amount of work. Creating a painting is obviously a different type of labor as creating a textile. And it really took a lot of work to be able to make that so obvious that they're referencing a very similar Visual language and creating that sort of visual language through multiple different forms. There's something really exciting to me about that, especially as Lena mentioned, these paintings were used in very specific context. They were distributed in very specific ways. Whereas the chords are, you know, popular arts, they're used in a lot more everyday context with everyday people. And so there's something really interesting about that translation of and movement of visuals from one place to the next and throughout time and space. And just again, like the way that artists were able to convey that those visuals from a painting to a textile. I'm really curious about how that process sort of came to be.

Steve Vos (68:47)

Fox News is now streaming live on Fox 1. When it matters most, turn to the voices you trust. We go beyond the headlines bringing us you the stories you won't hear anywhere else. Live coverage, sharp analysis, real perspective at home or on the go. Stay connected when it counts. Stream Fox News on Fox one Download today. Yeah, yeah, I will say there's two examples from what I remember seeing that really give you a sense that the sort of the tradition of manuscript painting is kind of being translated onto these chods. One is the depiction of Dunya and Shalibhadra's sort of fast to death. And so if you look at some of the Shaliphadra Chopai manuscripts that Nandita Punj has worked on, you can see the ways that like the scenes of their Santara or Salekana are being translated onto those pattas. And the other one of course is there's just one example of this, but it's one of my favorites in the Lynn collection is the baby Mahavir being bathed by Indra on Mount Nehru. Right. Which you only actually ever see in Kalpa Sutra manuscripts. So it's clear that somehow these illustrations from the manuscripts are finding their way into this kind of at least popular imagination in some way that, you know, maybe there's a manuscript in the family collection, something like that that's like making its way out into the.

Sayona Pugliati (70:23)

It's interesting that they're like the man. The painted manuscripts clearly have this sort of visual authority over a lot of different types of J nuts. And I'm. Yeah, that's a really interesting topic, I think Steve.

Leena Dhanani (70:37)

That's also one of my favorite paintings. And I wonder, you know, if I think I'm thinking about the one you're talking about. It has multi thread use in the hill where Indra is being bathed. And perhaps, I don't know if that's one example of in textile sort of a replication of color use because we do have, you know, these images on manuscripts are very colorful. But I also wanted to say, you know, now that I put that forward, I also think that we have sort of high commissioning, localized use of paintings to invite monks to cities. The vignatipatras, you know, we have. And I feel like there is a medium for each of these types of painted material artifacts, you know, they're doing something different. And I think that's probably where maybe like Steve's article on like, you know, late donut patronage and female fasting, you know, comes in, because you can sort of see that imprint on there. Whereas you have these invitation scrolls for monks to come, you have scenes of the village, you have, you know, and magnified in different ways, and they come in different lengths. There's a relationship between these paintings, especially like Kshatrunjaya Pattas and paintings in relationship to these invitation scrolls. You know, there's a sort of hybrid genre there. So, yeah, now that I'm thinking about it, there are local Jain styles of manufacturing material, visual culture that have their own idiom and purpose. But I do think that there's this much more local appearance and then we just get the inscriptions at the bottom, which help us just directly think about this relationship.

Steve Vos (72:25)

Yeah. I'm suddenly reminded of some of John Court's work about how they printed some of the early scriptures in the late 19th, early 20th century. And one of the things I was thinking of was Vinny Sagar's edition of the Kalpa Sutra that sort of takes a manuscript and puts it in sort of like apothe bound codex book form. And I wonder if, like some of that was. Yeah, at least a contributor to how it is that Jains who might not have otherwise had access to manuscripts would have seen some of those manuscript art forms, forms and wanted to translate those over into the chodes possible.

Leena Dhanani (73:02)

And it's interesting, I can't help but say this, but working on Stotras and this idea like Jainism is not just, you know, you know, the scriptures. Right. We're moving away from this idea that there are certain forms of even textual devotional material that's much more accessible. Right. Jain ideas that are in scriptures are often accessible through hymns, you know, Stotra, Stavin, Stuthis and those types of things where we can maybe see the same thing with the Chod, Right. This kind of landscape, these religious images are much more accessible in Chod, and in fact, they circulate. And in fact, immigrant communities are taking them.

Hitit Jain (73:40)

Right.

Leena Dhanani (73:41)

They have them

Sayona Pugliati (73:43)

kind of. Why I started studying textiles and art in general was. I was sort of opposed to this idea that people were only accessing religion through the written or spoken word. And what happens with migrant communities such as the ones that I work very closely with, when they don't know the languages of new places that they're encountering and coming to live and love in. And so for me, it was all about how do you communicate through to each other, with each other, about spiritual life that is so clearly important to people in these sort of non verbal forms and how people are consuming this information and keeping it close. And I felt like textiles to me really conveyed that message because not only do they have all the stories in these sort of. I hate to use it, but the comic book form where you sort of see the actions and see the important characters and they're attributed with different, you know, very specialized ways of. I think one of you mentioned just special characters have their special forms and you always know which character is which by their color or their rendering or something. So you understand that material and the information. But they're also textile, so you can keep them close and you can take them places and you can do things with them that you can't always do with temples or sculptures or even books for that matter. And so there's something really special about the way that, you know, these pieces convey those stories and allow people to consume them in different ways. I'm also thinking about the ones that are now coming to other diasporas. And when I mentioned, you know, descendants of immigrants who don't speak their languages or can't read or write the languages, but they're still experiencing those stories and still understanding them without being able to understand the text. I think there's something really interesting about how that sort of understanding of knowledge and experience is happening, essentially.

Steve Vos (75:46)

Yeah, it's such a complex world now. I mean, there aren't any examples of this particular one in the Lind collection or in the book. But I started to notice one of the more popular forms lately is the bhakta marstotra depicted on Chodbatthes, which is a Sanskrit hymn. But everyone knows it pretty much. And even if they couldn't tell you grammatically how it all works out, they pretty much know what all the verses mean too. But yeah, the form is, you see the Jinnah up at the top and there's a huge garland around him, and each of the flowers on the Garland has the first aksha, the first letter, first syllable of each of the 40. Well, in this case, 44 verses. Since it's Shwetambra, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, it's really interesting. And then down in the corner, you'll see Manatunga, the poet who composed it. Yeah, really interesting one. I've seen, like, well, just three of them now, but realize, like, it's a new genre of chodpatta.

Leena Dhanani (76:45)

Where have you seen them?

Steve Vos (76:46)

There's one that's here in Colorado, and then I saw another one in. In Birmingham when we were there just to.

Leena Dhanani (76:52)

Oh, that's right. I think I remember which one you're talking.

Steve Vos (76:54)

Yeah.

Hitit Jain (76:55)

So the, the form. The form is still evolving. It's not crystallized. It's still changing with new factors, new social and cultural phenomena, which is interesting, which is really fascinating to look. And as you mentioned in the beginning, it's more of looking in. Looking at Jainism as a lived religion and not just a textual religion and how people actually live it and how actually practice it. One thing which interested me as. And I. I found it relevant to my own research on Jain monasticism is, is the domestication of renunciation, which is happening in medieval times, as Patrick Oliver says, that Renuncian practices and Renaissance values are being imbibed in the life of a layperson. So do you think that as these chodpattas often commemorate acts of piety, acts of asceticism by Jain laity, more specifically Jain lay women in the recent centuries, do you think it's also a way of domestication of renunciation where ascetic values and ascetic piety is being imbibed into the life of a common gen at a larger scale or in a more widespread manner?

Steve Vos (78:02)

Yeah, I mean, this is actually one of the things that's like, really like, stuck with me from doing this project and especially from, you know, sort of asking people around in various communities, like, what these, these objects mean to them. I actually think that there's probably more fasting and tapas and asceticism going on now than there probably was five centuries ago among laypeople. That's. That's my guess. And. And I think some of that has to do with the way that certain moments in the 19th and 20th century when they were genes trying to reform what they saw as sort of, I don't know, lax practices among laypeople was to try to get lay people to do more things that look like what monks do. And the thing that I'm most curious about is did. Were they doing that as sort of a response to the kind of colonial critique of Indian religions in which, right you frequently heard this critique that like oh, the problem with Indians is that they don't understand their own traditions, right. And like we, the colonial people who know how to read the classical languages, right, we have the real knowledge of what their traditions are actually supposed to be about. And there are ways that they, that imbibed criticism and sort of like the, that hegemony of legitimate religion is what you do in your scriptures and like what is the origin of your tradition sort of finds its way back into like this is how we ought to reform society to be more like what it's supposed to be. Right. Rather than the sort of like the historical progression of laypeople's job is sort of to build merit and to sort of live pious lives by supporting their communities, by supporting mendicant communities. And yeah, so I actually, I'm very curious to sort of do more research on this to see if it's actually true that like say Gujarati, Shwetambar, Tapa Gach, Jains are doing way more fasting. Sort of in line with that comment I got from my degumber friend from Delhi. Like oh boy, those Gujaratis. And they're fasting. Right.

Hitit Jain (80:00)

Do you think material, material well being is like directly proportional to the amount of fasting?

Steve Vos (80:05)

I mean lots of people believe that. Yeah.

Leena Dhanani (80:10)

I probably would be a little bit more conservative with my response in terms of whether or not there's more fasting now than before. Right. I mean that's just up for study in a way. It's also like what evidence do you use to make those kinds of claims? And now I'm going to the Raso traditions where we have accounts of pilgrims going to Kshatunjay Girnar. We have Banarasidas is Arda Kathanak, you know, like we have representations of Jain lay piety. But I think it's, it's again, I think it comes down to a kind of the great thing about the Chod is having this localized ability to capture these pious moments. Right. To sort of create the space really. Not just even for Jane lay women, also for nuns.

Hitit Jain (81:05)

Right.

Leena Dhanani (81:05)

We do see a number of nuns names appear in these battas in the inscriptions. So I think it's, I personally think it's hard to say whether there's an increased form of Jain piety because of reform, but that there is perhaps an opening to documenting or that there could be other factors for doing it too. You know, that the other reasons of patronage. I wonder if, and this is a question of you know, like early form, 16th, 17th or 17th, 18th century patronage for chod how that shifted, maybe to families. I mean, I don't know. I don't have that history. I think that this is open for research. Right. But it does encapsulate, it does open up space for documenting what does happen, at least in the last century, with lay devotion and ascetic practices. Right. I don't think it's something that's anything new per se. Right. But we can talk about what its appearance looks like from the Chodba itself.

Hitit Jain (82:05)

You raise a very important point about jan nuns, I think, because, I mean, we are talking about jan livewomen. So I think I would also be curious to know what Jain nuns were doing or what kind of authority they exerted over lay women in their practices. Do the Chotpaja tell anything about that to us?

Steve Vos (82:22)

Yeah, yeah. Not just overlay women, but overlay men too frequently. What we see in these inscriptions are that there's a nun who will sort of put herself in the lineage with, you know, naming the monk who's the head of their lineage, but, you know, showing fairly clearly that they were the ones who recommended that a layman do a certain practice or to commission a chod on behalf of his wife who led a very pious life, especially if she is recently deceased. So, yeah, we have a handful of examples of that too. And really, like, sometimes you see them in kind of far flung places, like very small towns in Gujarat, where none has given a layman some guidance on doing something. So you wonder if, you know, where you spend chaturmas has a lot to do with, you know, kind of the gravity of your. The communities that are drawing you in and. Right. Not everybody gets access to the people who are spending, you know, every third chaturmas in Mumbai. Mumbai, right. And so if you're a Jane living in fairly rural parts of Gujarat, the people who you have around you, who, who are your religious authority figures, are nuns. But that, I mean, it's not to say that nuns in Mumbai don't also have authority. They have lots of it too. Yeah.

Leena Dhanani (83:33)

It's interesting because this is also. There are also some cases where sadis are commemorating Sadi figure in historically. So I was just looking at the sad Chandan Bala's Chod, where we have the first female disciple of Mahavira depicted somewhere on the top. This is on page 130 of the book. And underneath it we have both her ascetic and female disciples. But this was commemorated. This was embroidered at the behest of Sadvi Ji Sri Jambu Sri Ji for the sake of remembering Sadvi Charitra Sri Ji, who was a devoted disciple of Sri Harishvi Sadvi Ji, Harishvi Ji. So that's interesting because here's a moment where they're actually commemorate. They're thinking they're tying themselves to an historical nun. Right. Commemorating themselves through their connection to Sadvich Onan Bhara. So, yeah, I just wanted to add that, you know, that there are these sort of multiple dimensions in which or multiple relationships that sadvis appear in on these trods.

Hitit Jain (84:47)

But they are playing an important role and they are acting in their own capacity, not just being passive recipients of their authority.

Leena Dhanani (84:56)

That's right, right, right. And that's. And that's kind of in keeping with the way nuns typically at least do what's in the Shwetambhara communities. You know, sort of the, the spaces they have, you know, they have a lot of power and in several circumstances.

Hitit Jain (85:12)

So, yeah, yeah, it's fascinating and I think I've also taken a lot of time of you guys and yeah, I think we can stop the discussion here, which. It was fascinating and I really love talking to you. Thank you very much for accepting this invite being here, and it was a fascinating discussion. Pan, if I may ask, what. What do you think can be more research avenues, as a concluding question, what. What can be more research avenues in regards with chodpattas or other forms of material devotion in. In Jainism or Genshinis?

Steve Vos (85:48)

Oh, I mean, I think that we should be building a big database of the. All the inscriptions.

Hitit Jain (85:54)

Right.

Steve Vos (85:54)

I think you could write an entire social history of Jainism just based on. On the chodpattas, like between the visual form and the inscriptions and everything. Yeah, absolutely right.

Leena Dhanani (86:04)

I think there can be more work done between the way chodpattas and like, let's say Indian paintings are connected. I think in terms of the historical developments of chodpattas, there's a lot to be studied. Collecting chodpattas, creating that database, but collecting it from India, East Africa, America. I mean, we also have Chod Bhattas scattered in different collections and museums. I'm thinking about the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. So there's a lot that can be done.

Sayona Pugliati (86:34)

Yeah. And I would love to do some more material analysis of the choths and just learn more about the material production and do some dating experiments with them so that we can actually see the. When some of the older ones have come about. And I think that would also lead into some studies on ecological production and cultivation in the regions that they're from, which would be really cool and interesting to study.

Leena Dhanani (87:02)

I also would like to see studies on the artists themselves. I'd really like to know much more about the artists and the changes because there have been documented changes in who are making these choths. For example, we had Muslim artists who were located or have left, like Surat, for example. We have women who are now working on chods. So there's a whole artistic base that perhaps is not different from like other forms of artistic bases in India where you have multi faith artists working on particular monuments or, you know. But I think there's a lot to be done there about the actual artists themselves.

Sayona Pugliati (87:36)

There's also an interesting increase of contemporary artists in India who have been working with artists who are making more quote, unquote, traditional pieces or pieces that are associated with very strict religious contexts or however you want to define that. But the contemporary artists are taking them into new forms and sort of working in collaboration with these artists to create new narratives. And that's been really exciting to see and how the sort of new galleries of India are approaching this sort of art form.

Steve Vos (88:15)

Yeah, I think. Yeah. One last thing would be kind of a better analysis of how we see that shift happen over the 20th century where this goes from a form that commemorates lay men and lay women more or less equally to a form that almost exclusively commemorates lay women. Yeah, I think there's a lot to be sort of.

Hitit Jain (88:36)

And that sounds fascinating. In fact, that was one of the things I noticed in your essay is that you mentioned it exclusively becomes about lay women at the end of 20th century. So that's a big shift happening there in terms of social history. Yeah. But all of this sounds really exciting and I wish you all the best and I hope you can work more on Chodbatas and we can get to know more about its history, its artisan importance and all of these multifaceted questions you have just, just discussed. So, yeah, thank you very much for once again for this interview. It was lovely talking to you all.

Leena Dhanani (89:09)

Thank you.

Steve Vos (89:10)

Thank you very much.