faithfully observing the “jaya,” or
“victory,” festival is said to ensure that
one’s desired goal will be attained.
Jayapala
(d. 1001) One of the last kings of the
Pratiharas, a northern Indian dynasty
whose capital was in Kanyakubjaon the
GangesRiver. By Jayapala’s time the
divided Hindu kingdoms in northern
India were being threatened by the
Turkish emirs, especially Mahmud of
Ghazni, who had settled in modern-day
Afghanistan. Jayapala was defeated and
captured in battle with Mahmud and
subsequently committed suicide; a
short time later, Jayapala’s son
Anandapalasuffered a crushing defeat,
leaving a nearly complete collapse of
power in northern India. Because of this
absence of any effective opposition,
Mahmud was able to indulge in almost
yearly campaigns of pillage and plunder.
Jayarashi
(7th c.?) Author of the Tattvopaplavasimha,
one of the only surviving texts of the
materialist philosophical school. One
of the philosophical peculiarities of
the materialist school was that they
accepted only perception (pratyaksha)
as a reliable pramana, or means
by which people can gain true and
accurate knowledge. In his text,
Jayarashi argued against the reliability of
inference (anumana) as one of the
pramanas by refuting the concept of
cause and effect. To make an inference,
such as inferring the result an action
will bring in the future based on the
result it brought in the past, one
must believe that the cause-and-effect
model is reliable.
Jejuri
Town in the Pune district of the central
Indian state of Maharashtra, about forty
miles south and east of the city of Pune.
Jejuri is primarily noted as the site of the
primary temple to Khandoba, an
important Maharashtrian regional deity
who has been brought into the pantheon
of gods as an avatar, or incarnation, of
the god Shiva.Jhanki
(“glimpse”) A momentary “glimpse” of
the divine, in which the devotee (bhakta)
gains momentary access to the world of
the gods. Jhankis are most often con-
veyed through the performing arts:
through the mental images created
when devotional poetry is read, recited,
or sung, or through the images presented
in religious dance, drama, or film.
During these momentary encounters,
the devotee comes briefly into the pres-
ence of the deity, sharing the deity’s
world. This stress on the opportunity to
experience a brief physical presence in
the deity’s world is particularly strong in
the Vaishnavadevotionalism connected
with the gods Krishna and Rama.
Worshipof these deities often stresses
visualization of the deity’s life and every-
day actions as a way for devotees to gain
access to that divine world. Devotees of
both deities have created plays, or lilas,
to aid them in this process: for Rama,
they are the Ram Lilas, which are per-
formed throughout India during the
autumn festival season, and for Krishna,
they are the Krishna Lilas, performed
during the annual monsoonseason in
Brindavan, Krishna’s childhood home.Jimutavahana
(early 12th c.) Author of the Dayabhaga,
a legal text primarily concerned with
inheritance, partition, and the division
of property. It eventually became the pri-
mary legal authority for the Bengal cul-
tural region; areas outside Bengal were
usually governed by a different legal text,
the Mitakshara. One of the major differ-
ences between these texts concerns the
nature of inheritance. The Mitakshara
stresses inheritance by survivorship, in
which only living males can inherit prop-
erty, whereas the Dayabhaga stresses
inheritance by succession, in which a
dead man’s heirs can inherit in his name.Jimutavahana