William Dalrymple
Series 1 Episode 1
Do No Harm: Mapping the Jain Cosmos
Series 1 Episode 1
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Welcome to the first episode of What’s Your Map? where host Jerry Brotton is joined by historian William Dalrymple, who unfurls a beautiful Jain cosmological map to explore the meaning and history of this ancient Indian religion.
William untangles Jain beliefs and history through their cosmological map of the universe. He recounts his visit to a Jain temple where he bore witness to heartbreak and ritual death. In his view, Jain maps of the cosmos are similar to mandalas, which are powerful geometrical symbols often used to focus the mind for meditation or contemplation.
The map being discussed by Jerry and William in this episode is a Jain map of the cosmos from The Sunderland Collection, painted using distemper on cloth in c1770. It comes from the Indian state of Gujarat. More information about this map can be found here.
To view the map and zoom in during the podcast, click on the image below.
About William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapuściński award-winning Return of a King. His book The Anarchy was shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, the Tata Book of the Year (Non-fiction) and the Historical Writers Association Book Award 2020. It was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Bronze Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations.
A frequent broadcaster, William has written and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA. He has also won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, The Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards, and been awarded five honorary doctorates.
William's latest book is The Golden Road: How India Transformed the World (2024), available now from Bloomsbury Publishing.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has held visiting fellowships at Princeton, Brown and Oxford. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and the Guardian.
In 2018, William was presented with the prestigious President’s Medal by the British Academy for his outstanding literary achievement and for co-founding the Jaipur Literature Festival. He was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers for 2020 by Prospect. William lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.
A new episode of WHAT'S YOUR MAP? will be available every two weeks.
Meet our host, Jerry Brotton here!
Find our more about the podcast here.
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