Person Christine Chojnacki

Christine Chojnacki, Professor of Indian Studies at the University of Lyon, studied classical philology (Latin, Ancient Greek) before specialising in Indian studies. She worked on various Jain literary genres (ritual eulogy, invitation letter, biography) composed in several Indian languages, mainly in Sanskrit and Prakrit, but also in Apabhraṃśa and Old-Gujarati. With Uddyotana’s Kuvalayamālā “Garland of blue waterlilies”, she turned to the genre of Jaina romance-poems in Prakrit. Her study of this work, accompanied by a French translation (Marburg: Indica et Tibetica, 2008) was awarded the Prakrit Jnanabharati International Award in 2013 and also translated into English (Bangalore: Sapna House, 2018). The Kuvalayamālā raised Chojnacki's interest in this genre, and when she started looking for related works, she found a surprising number of texts that were badly transmitted and mostly unexplored. The present study is a first attempt at making these poetically wonderful and culturally very rich works accessible to further research.