The Jain Pradyumnacarita

Abstract Chapter 5 examines the Jain rendering of the Pradyumna abduction narrative as it is developed in the Pradyumnacarita, a substantial cycle of tales that formed part of the Jain tradition’s larger recasting of the Kṛṣṇa biography. Central to this rewriting is Pradyumna’s absolute rejection of the mother figure’s sexual advances, as well as a number of sub-episodes entirely without parallel in Brahminical literature. The analysis of these materials identifies certain premises about the nature of women which are in fact shared by Brahmins and Jains. It is argued that Pradyumna models, for Jain as much as for Brahminical authors, a total control over women and the powers they embody, only in two very different ways: in the Jain context this means a total resistance to woman and all that she embodies, and in the Brahminical, a total sexual appropriation bespeaking virility and masculine sexual power.