Slade Lectures 2027 | Core Concepts of Jaina Art: Visuality and the Jaina Tradition in India and the Diaspora - Pilgrimage Replication

Pilgrimage Replication: Multi-media Representations of the Sacred in the Human World - Prof Dr Julia A.B. Hegewald

The world of man forms a minute part of the Jaina cosmos. Despite this, we find large numbers of sites throughout India which have been sanctified by an auspicious event in the life of one of the Jaina saints (Jinas) or by a mythical or miraculous event. It is fascinating to observe that these sites do not exist only once as a real place, but that they have been replicated countless times and often depicted in a number of different media. There are paintings on paper and on cloth, and today also poster prints and photographs, which have often been presented in the form of collages, as well as relief carvings, sculptural depictions and architectural replications of pilgrimage places. Sometimes, the entire topography of a sacred mountain site has been reproduced at another spot thousands of kilometres away. These replications transfer some of the holiness of the original place to other locales, creating manifold reference points and networks of sanctity over the whole of India and permitting those unable to travel to partake in the sanctity of sites of universal and more local importance.

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).

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Image credit: Julia A.B. Hegewald