Jainism under the Delhi Sultanate

The establishment of Muslim rule in northern India, beginning with the Ghurid conquests around 1200 CE and consolidated under the successive dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate, opened a new and challenging era for Jainism. Concentrated by this period especially in western India, in Gujarat and Rajasthan, the Jain community navigated the changed political landscape with a combination of resilience, adaptation and the economic indispensability of its mercantile class.

The Sultanate period brought episodes of destruction that affected Jain sacred sites along with those of other faiths. The military campaigns and iconoclastic actions of some rulers led to the damage or demolition of temples in various regions, and Jain shrines at prominent centres suffered in the course of these upheavals. The great pilgrimage sites of Gujarat and the temple towns of the west experienced periods of vulnerability, and Jain communities at times faced the destruction of images and the disruption of worship.

Yet the picture is far from one of unrelieved persecution. The Jain community, and particularly its wealthy and highly organised merchant and banking families, possessed economic value that made accommodation and even favour possible. Jain merchants dominated significant sectors of trade and finance, and their capital and administrative skills were useful to the state. As a result, Jain individuals sometimes rose to positions of influence, secured protection for their communities, and were able to rebuild and maintain temples and institutions.

There are notable instances of Jains obtaining concessions and even patronage from Muslim rulers. Wealthy Jain laymen negotiated for the protection of pilgrimage sites, the repair of temples and the safe conduct of religious activities. The pragmatic relationship between the mercantile Jain elite and the ruling authorities allowed the tradition to persist and, in places, to prosper even amid political insecurity. The continued production of manuscripts, the copying and preservation of scripture, and the building and restoration of temples through the Sultanate centuries testify to the community's endurance.

The period also saw important developments within Jainism itself. The great manuscript libraries of western India, the bhandars, were maintained and enriched, preserving the textual heritage of the tradition through uncertain times. Scholarly and literary activity continued, and the internal life of the community, its rituals, festivals, pilgrimages and monastic institutions, carried on. It was also during the later part of this era, in the fifteenth century, that the reformer Lonka Shah launched his critique of image worship, giving rise to the aniconic movements that would later crystallise into the Sthanakvasi tradition, a development that unfolded within the world of Sultanate-era western India.

The experience of Jainism under the Delhi Sultanate thus resists simple characterisation. It was a time of genuine danger, when sacred sites could be destroyed and communities disrupted, but also a time of adaptation and survival, in which the economic strength and social cohesion of the Jain laity provided a measure of security. The tradition emerged from these centuries with its heartland in the west intact, its scriptural and artistic heritage preserved, and its institutions ready to enter a new phase of engagement with the Mughal empire that would follow.

This long medieval encounter demonstrated the capacity of Jainism, and especially of its merchant communities, to preserve their faith and identity under conditions of political subordination, a capacity that would serve the tradition well in the centuries to come.