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“Today I Play Holī in My City” Digambar Jain Holī Songs From Jaipur
Cort, John E.
Cort, John E.
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Abstract
The springtime festival of Holī has long posed a problem for Jains. Jain ideologues have criticized the celebration of Holī as contravening several key Jain ethical virtues. In response, Digambar Jain poets developed a genre of Holī songs that transformed the elements of Holī into a complex spiritual allegory, and thereby “tamed” the transgressive festival. This essay analyzes the six Holī songs (pad) by the poet Budhjan (fl. CE 1778-1838) of Jaipur. An investigation of this Digambar genre of Holī songs encourages us to see that many of the “Hindu” Holī songs from this same period were also engaged in a process of reframing and taming Holī. Both Hindu and Jain songs translated its antinomian and transgressive elements into softer, less threatening sets of metaphors specific to their spiritual traditions.
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2013
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Creative Commons Copyright (CC 2.5)