Slade Lectures 2027
Slade Lectures 2027 | Core Concepts of Jaina Art: Visuality and the Jaina Tradition in India and the Diaspora
Image credit: Julia A.B. Hegewald
Architectural Multiplicity: The Modular Construction System of Jaina Temples
Prof. Dr. Julia A.B. Hegewald
5pm Wednesday 27 January 2027
Auditorium, St John's College, University of Oxford
(Free Admission)
Jaina religious practice has been strongly shaped by the ritual of giving (dāna). This leads to large numbers of donations and growing numbers of religious objects, which demand architectural extensions of existing shrines and the regular endowment of new temple buildings to accommodate them. In addition, Jaina ritual is characterised by the veneration of a large number of different sacred objects. These can be figural icons (enlightened humans and divinities), more abstract elements (sacred symbols and objects, visualised mantras, cosmological items, etc.) and sacred scripture, which are all displayed in Jaina sacred architecture. In order to accommodate this large and ever-increasing diversity of revered objects, Jaina temples have continuously been expanded and added to throughout India and during all periods. This has led to the creation of highly complex and multifaceted spatial compositions which visualise the concept of multiplicity on various levels, such as collections of venerated objects, roof structures, sanctums (on horizontal and various superimposed vertical levels), subsidiary shrines and entire walled temple complexes.
Julia A.B. Hegewald is Professor of Oriental Art History and Head of the Department of Asian and Islamic Art History at the University of Bonn. She was a Research Fellow at University College Oxford (1998-2005), Head of an Emmy-Noether-Research Group (German Research Foundation, DFG, 2005-2014) and Reader in Non-Western Art History at Manchester University (2007-2010). Since taking up the Chair in Oriental Art History at Bonn in 2010, Julia Hegewald has been active in a number of international research initiatives. Amongst the most recent are the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS, 2018-2025, 2026-2032), the ERC Synergy Grant Mantrams and the ERC Consolidator Grant ID-Scapes. She has published widely on the art and architecture of the Jaina community in India, most notably Jaina Temple Architecture in India: The Development of a Distinct Language in Space and Ritual (2009, 2018, 2024). In recent years, she has engaged intensively with the Digambara Jaina tradition in the south Indian state of Karnataka, with a number of publications, including The Jaina Heritage: Distinction, Decline and Resilience (2011), Jaina Tradition of the Deccan: Shravanabelagola, Mudabidri, Karkala (2021), Jaina Culture in Medieval Karnataka: Dominance, Dependency and Endurance (2025) and Jainism under Threat: Extreme Forms of Dependency in Medieval Karnataka, South India (2026).
