JAHN, JOHANN (1750-1816), German Orientalist, was born at Tasswitz, Moravia, on the 18th of June 1750. He studied philosophy at Olmütz, and in 1772 began his theological studies at the Premonstratensian convent of Bruck, near Znaim. Having been ordained in 1775, he for a short time held a cure at Mislitz, but was soon recalled to Bruck as professor of Oriental languages and Biblical hermeneutics. On the suppression of the convent by Joseph II. in 1784, Jahn took up similar work at Olmütz, and in 1789 he was transferred to Vienna as professor of Oriental languages, biblical archaeology and dogmatics. In 1792 he published his Einleitung ins Alte Testament (2 vols.), which soon brought him into trouble; the cardinal-archbishop of Vienna laid a complaint against him for having departed from the traditional teaching of the Church, e.g. by asserting Job, Jonah, Tobit and Judith to be didactic poems, and the cases of demoniacal possession in the New Testament to be cases of dangerous disease. An ecclesiastical commission reported that the views themselves were not necessarily heretical, but that Jahn had erred in showing too little consideration for the views of German Catholic theologians in coming into conflict with his bishop, and in raising difficult problems by which the unlearned might be led astray. He was accordingly advised to modify his expressions in future. Although he appears honestly to have accepted this judgment, the hostility of his opponents did not cease until at last (1806) he was compelled to accept a canonry at St Stephen’s, Vienna, which involved the resignation of his chair. This step had been preceded by the condemnation of his Introductio in libros sacros veteris foederis in compendium redacta, published in 1804, and also of his Archaeologia biblica in compendium redacta (1805). The only work of importance, outside the region of mere philology, afterwards published by him, was the Enchiridion Hermeneuticae (1812). He died on the 16th of August 1816.
Besides the works already mentioned, he published Hebräische Sprachlehre für Anfänger (1792); Aramäische od. Chaldäische u. Syrische Sprachlehre für Anfänger(1793); Arabische Sprachlehre (1796); Elementarbuch der hebr. Sprache (1799); Chaldäische Chrestomathie (1800); Arabische Chrestomathie (1802); Lexicon arabico-latinum chrestomathiae accommodatum (1802); an edition of the Hebrew Bible (1806); Grammatica linguae hebraicae (1809); a critical commentary on the Messianic passages of the Old Testament (Vaticinia prophetarum de Jesu Messia, 1815). In 1821 a collection of Nachträge appeared, containing six dissertations on Biblical subjects. The English translation of the Archaeologia by T. C. Upham (1840) has passed through several editions.
JAHN, OTTO (1813-1869), German archaeologist, philologist, and writer on art and music, was born at Kiel on the 16th of June 1813. After the completion of his university studies at Kiel, Leipzig and Berlin, he travelled for three years in France and Italy; in 1839 he became privatdocent at Kiel, and in 1842 professor-extraordinary of archaeology and philology at Greifswald (ordinary professor 1845). In 1847 he accepted the chair of archaeology at Leipzig, of which he was deprived in 1851 for having taken part in the political movements of 1848-1849. In 1855 he was appointed professor of the science of antiquity, and director of the academical art museum at Bonn, and in 1867 he was called to succeed E. Gerhard at Berlin. He died at Göttingen, on the 9th of September 1869.
The following are the most important of his works: 1. Archaeological: Palamedes (1836); Telephos u. Troilos (1841); Die Gemälde des Polygnot (1841); Pentheus u. die Mänaden (1841); Paris u. Oinone (1844); Die hellenische Kunst (1846); Peitho, die Göttin der Überredung (1847); Über einige Darstellungen des Paris-Urteils (1849); Die Ficoronische Cista (1852); Pausaniae descriptio arcis Athenarum (3rd ed., 1901); Darstellungen griechischer Dichter auf Vasenbildern (1861). 2. Philological: Critical editions of Juvenal, Persius and Sulpicia (3rd ed. by F. Bücheler, 1893); Censorinus (1845); Florus (1852); Cicero’s Brutus (4th ed., 1877); and Orator (3rd ed., 1869); the Periochae of Livy (1853); the Psyche et Cupido of Apuleius (3rd ed., 1884; 5th ed., 1905); Longinus (1867; 3rd ed. by J. Vahlen, 1905). 3. Biographical and aesthetic: Üeber Mendelssohn’s Paulus (1842); Biographie Mozarts, a work of extraordinary labour, and of great importance for the history of music (3rd ed. by H. Disters, 1889-1891; Eng. trans. by P. D. Townsend, 1891); Ludwig Uhland (1863); Gesammelte Aufsätze über Musik (1866); Biographische Aufsätze (1866). His Griechische Bilderchroniken was published after his death, by his nephew A. Michaelis, who has written an exhaustive biography in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, xiii.; see also J. Vahlen, Otto Jahn (1870); C. Bursian, Geschichte der classischen Philologie in Deutschland.
JAHRUM, a town and district of Persia in the province of Fars, S.E. of Shiraz and S.W. of Darab. The district has thirty-three villages and is famous for its celebrated sháhán dates, which are exported in great quantities; it also produces much tobacco and fruit. The water supply is scanty, and most of the irrigation is by water drawn from wells. The town of Jahrum, situated about 90 m. S.E. of Shiraz, is surrounded by a mud-wall 3 m. in circuit which was constructed in 1834. It has a population of about 15,000, one half living inside and the other half outside the walls. It is the market for the produce of the surrounding districts, has six caravanserais and a post office.
JAINS, the most numerous and influential sect of heretics, or nonconformists to the Brahmanical system of Hinduism, in India. They are found in every province of upper Hindustan, in the cities along the Ganges and in Calcutta. But they are more numerous to the west—in Mewar, Gujarat, and in the upper part of the Malabar coast—and are also scattered throughout the whole of the southern peninsula. They are mostly traders, and live in the towns; and the wealth of many of their community gives them a social importance greater than would result from their mere numbers. In the Indian census of 1901 they are returned as being 1,334,140 in number. Their magnificent series of temples and shrines on Mount Abu, one of the seven wonders of India, is perhaps the most striking outward sign of their wealth and importance.
The Jains are the last direct representatives on the continent of India of those schools of thought which grew out of the active philosophical speculation and earnest spirit of religious inquiry that prevailed in the valley of the Ganges during the 5th and 6th centuries before the Christian era. For many centuries Jainism was so overshadowed by that stupendous movement, born at the same time and in the same place, which we call Buddhism, that it remained almost unnoticed by the side of its powerful rival. But when Buddhism, whose widely open doors had absorbed the mass of the community, became thereby corrupted from its pristine purity and gradually died away, the smaller school of the Jains, less diametrically opposed to the victorious orthodox creed of the Brahmans, survived, and in some degree took its place.