Knowing Me, Knowing You: Hindu Goddess Traditions According to Jinasena’s Harivaṃśapurāṇa

Abstract In 783 CE, Jinasena, a Digambara Jaina, composed the Harivaṃśapurāṇa , a text best known as the first Jaina retelling of Vyāsa’s Mahābhārata and Harivaṃśa . In it, Jinasena narrates the birth of Kṛṣṇa and the origin of Kṛṣṇa devotion in a world cohabited by Jainas. However, Jinasena does not confine his text to a discussion of Vaiṣṇavism and Vyāsa’s epics. Nor does he present violence as the identifying mark of religious others. This article focuses on one tale in Jinasena’s Harivaṃśapurāṇa that, I argue, constructs the identity of Durgā worshipers through a critical, relational, and historical examination of contemporaneous Hindu sources. The tale is called the “Origin of Durgā” (Durgopapatti). It examines the relations of similarity that connect discrete Hindu representations of Durgā and her worshipers into a single religious identity. Jinasena reaches the conclusion that epistemological error unifies diverse representations of Durgā, her rituals, and her devotees into a single religious identity that stands in opposition to Jainism. This article brings to light this co-construction of Śākta and Jaina identity. It demonstrates how Jaina writers who retell Hindu epics do not confine themselves to either hermeneutical discussions of their source text or ethical discussions of violence when constructing Hindu identity. In proving this point, this article widens our understanding of Jaina retellings of Hindu epics and deepens our understanding of how religious identities are constructed in premodern India.