ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the way in which female religious practice was an integral part of the social, economic and prestige structure of the Svetambar Murtipujak Jain trading community in the old city of Jaipur. Using the fast of aksay nidhi as a case study, it suggests that Jain religious beliefs and practices contribute to the creation of female personhood and strengthens and supports a woman’s sense of self, helping her to deal with specific pressures arising from gender and kinship roles within her husband’s family. Anthropological perspectives use the etic category of human personhood to investigate how individual biological humans are conceptualised as, and become, social beings. Jain doctrine emphasises how central the soul is to all sentient beings and especially to Jain concepts of the human being. Jain kinship and marriage in Rajasthan, and Jaipur in particular, shares most of the features found amongst other high caste Hindu communities in northern India.
