Mahavira

• 1. Introduction

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  Mahavira, born with the name Vardhamana, spent twelve and a half years without sitting down. He stood through monsoons, endured animals biting at his flesh, and discarded his clothing entirely. By the end of that period, he had achieved what Jains call Kevala Jnana: omniscience, or infinite knowledge. He then traveled and preached for thirty more years before dying at the age of seventy-two in the town of Pawapuri, in what is now Bihar, India. That night, according to Jain tradition, his chief disciple also attained omniscience. Jains commemorate that night as Diwali.

  The questions that shadow Mahavira's life are as fascinating as the life itself. Did he found Jainism, or did he inherit it from a much older tradition? Was he a contemporary of the Buddha, and if so, by how much? What exactly did he teach about the soul, about violence, about the nature of reality itself? And how did the movement he left behind survive his death, fracture into rival sects, lose most of its scriptures, and still endure as a living tradition into the present day?

• 2. The Problem of Dates

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  The 12th-century Jain scholar Hemachandra placed Mahavira in the 6th to 5th century BCE, but beyond that placement, almost everything about his dates is contested. The two major sects of Jainism, the Digambara and the Svetambara, agree that he was born in 599 BCE. They disagree sharply on when he died: the Svetambaras say 527 BCE, the Digambaras say 510 BCE.

  A scholar named Rapson observed that Jains preserved chronological records about Mahavira and the pontiffs who followed him, but that by the time those lists were fixed into their present form, the real date had "already either been forgotten or was at least doubtful." The Jain calendar era, the Vira Nirvana Samvat, begins in 527 BCE and was calculated by adding 470 years to the Vikram Samvat, which itself dates from the medieval period. Rapson argued this calculation is unreliable because it conflates rulers of Ujjain, Magadha, and other kingdoms who may have reigned simultaneously rather than in sequence.

  The most useful anchor modern historians have is the Buddha. Buddhist texts confirm that Mahavira and Gautama Buddha were contemporaries. Both lived during the reigns of kings Bimbisara and Ajatashatru of Magadha. Scholars who accept the "Short Chronology" for the Buddha, placing his life at roughly 480-400 BCE, conclude that the traditional dates for Mahavira are too early by as much as a century. Paul Dundas has suggested Mahavira may have died around 425 BCE, or a few years after. Jeyaraj Long proposes roughly 499-427 BCE as his approximate lifespan. The uncertainty itself tells a story: what survives of Mahavira is a body of teaching so powerful it outlasted the records of the man who gave it.

• 3. Royal Birth, Rival Traditions

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  Mahavira was born into the royal family of King Siddhartha of the Naya tribe and Queen Trishala of the Licchavi republic, in a place called Kundagrama in the Kingdom of the Videhas. Both the Uttarapurana and the Kalpa Sutra name this birthplace. The Nayas were kshatriyas, the warrior-ruler caste, and the Acarariga Sutra describes Mahavira directly as "a Naya, the son of a Naya-Khattiya: the moon of the clan of the Nayas."

  The exact location of Kundagrama within present-day Bihar remains disputed. JP Sharma identified it as a suburb of the ancient city of Vaishali. Another candidate is the village of Basu Kund, about 60 km north of Patna. Modern pilgrimage circuits honor either Kundalpur in Nalanda or Kshatriyakund in Jamui as the birthplace, with large temple complexes at both sites.

  The traditions split even on the facts of his childhood. The Digambara sect holds that Mahavira refused his parents' wish that he marry a woman named Yashoda. The Svetambara tradition says he did marry Yashoda and that they had one daughter, Priyadarshana, also called Anojja. The Svetambara texts add a detail the Digambaras reject outright: that Mahavira's embryo first formed in the womb of a Bamana woman and was then transferred by Hari-Naigamesin, described as the divine commander of Indra's army, to the womb of his mother Trishala. Jain texts describe his height as 7 hastas, or about 6 feet, recorded in the Aupapatika Sutra, and note that he was the shortest of the twenty-four tirthankaras.

• 4. Twelve Years Without Sitting

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  At age thirty, Mahavira left behind royal life. He shed his clothes, undertook severe fasts, meditated under the Ashoka tree, and practiced bodily mortifications that the Acarariga Sutra describes in graphic detail. According to the Kalpa Sutra, he spent the first forty-two monsoons of his ascetic life moving through a long list of named places: Astikagrama, Champapuri, Prstichampa, Vaishali, Vanijagrama, Nalanda, Mithila, Bhadrika, Alabhika, Panitabhumi, Shravasti, and Pawapuri. He is said to have spent the rainy season of his forty-first ascetic year in Rajagriha, traditionally dated to 491 BCE.

  After twelve and a half years of this regimen, Mahavira achieved Kevala Jnana under a Sala tree on the bank of the River Rijuvalika near a place called Jrimbhikagrama, at age 43. The Jain texts Uttar-purana and Harivamsa-purana describe the details of that moment. The Acarariga Sutra calls him all-seeing; the Sutrakritanga expands that to all-knowing and enumerates other qualities.

  What followed was thirty years of preaching across India, at least according to the Svetambara account. The Digambara tradition maintains instead that Mahavira remained in his Samavasarana, a kind of assembly hall, and delivered sermons to followers who came to him. This quiet disagreement between the two sects about where and how Mahavira taught reflects a deeper divide that would eventually split his movement permanently.

• 5. Disciples and the Living Community

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  Jain texts name eleven Brahmanas as Mahavira's first disciples, the eleven Ganadharas. Their leader was Indrabhuti Gautama. The others were Agnibhuti, Vayubhuti, Akampita, Arya Vyakta, Sudharman, Manditaputra, Mauryaputra, Acalabhraataa, Metraya, and Prabhasa. These eleven are believed to have remembered and orally transmitted Mahavira's teachings after his death.

  The Kalpa Sutra gives the scale of his following in striking numbers: 14,000 sadhus (male ascetics), 36,000 sadhvis (female ascetics), 159,000 male lay followers, and 318,000 female lay followers. Among his royal followers, Jain tradition names Srenika and Kunika of the Haryanka dynasty, better known as Bimbisara and Ajatashatru, and Chetaka of Videha. Chandana is believed to have led the female monastic order.

  Mahavira initiated his mendicants with the five mahavratas, or great vows. He delivered fifty-five pravachana, or recitations, and a set of lectures known as the Uttaraadhyayana-sutra. His four-fold order, the chaturvidha sangha of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen, gave Jainism a social structure that allowed it to survive as a living practice across centuries. The question of whether women in that order could attain liberation on equal terms with men would become one of Jainism's most persistent internal arguments.

• 6. What He Taught

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  Ahimsa, or non-violence, is the first and most fundamental of Mahavira's five vows, and it is the teaching for which he is best remembered across Indian traditions. He taught that every living being has sanctity and dignity, and that ahimsa applies not just to action but to speech and thought. According to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahavira was the greatest authority on ahimsa. The Acarariga Sutra records that Mahavira believed life existed in animals, plants, insects, bodies of water, fire, and wind, and that a monk should avoid disturbing any of them. A monk should not swim, light or extinguish a fire, or even wave his arms in the air, for fear of injuring beings living in water or air.

  Paul Dundas has noted that some Jain scholars interpret Mahavira's emphasis on non-violence not as compassion for other creatures but as a rigorous self-discipline: a continual cleansing of the soul that leads to spiritual development and release.

  Mahavira also taught the doctrine of anekantavada, or many-sided reality. He held that truth and reality are complex, with multiple aspects, and that human language can only ever express a partial truth, what he called a naya. Any verbal claim about reality is syat, meaning valid "in some respect" but still "perhaps, just one perspective, incomplete." The Jain Agamas record Mahavira's approach to metaphysical questions as consistently a "qualified yes." Dundas cautions that many Jains have misread this doctrine as a call for universal religious tolerance; Mahavira's five vows for monks and nuns are strict requirements, with no "perhaps" attached to them.

  On the soul, Mahavira's position was sharply distinct from Buddhist teaching. He held that the soul is substantial, eternal, and yet subject to temporary change. He taught that there is no creator deity, and that existence has neither beginning nor end. Karma in Jainism, as he defined it, is not just action but intent; it colors the soul, affecting how and where and as what a soul is reborn.

• 7. Lost Scriptures, Rival Sects

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  Mahavira's teachings were compiled by his chief disciple, Indrabhuti Gautama, as the Jain Agamas, in twelve canonical parts. The transmission was entirely oral at first. According to Jain tradition, a severe famine in the Magadha kingdom after about 300 BCE dispersed the Jain monks and caused much of that oral canon to be lost.

  Later monks tried to reconstruct what had been forgotten. An attempt at reconciliation in the 5th century CE failed. The Svetambara and Digambara traditions ended up holding their own incomplete, somewhat different versions of Mahavira's teachings. In the early centuries of the common era, what remained was committed to palm-leaf manuscripts. The Digambara tradition holds that Acharya Bhutabali was the last ascetic with even partial knowledge of the original canon. Acharya Dharasena, in the 1st century CE, guided Acharyas Pushpadant and Bhutabali as they wrote down the teachings. Those two men produced the Satkhandagama, among the oldest known Digambara texts.

  Colonial-era Indologists initially classified Jainism as a sect of Buddhism because of surface similarities in iconography and ascetic practice. As scholarship advanced, the differences between Mahavira's teachings and the Buddha's were found to be so fundamental that the two traditions were recognized as entirely separate. Moriz Winternitz noted that Mahavira taught a "very elaborate belief in the soul," a direct contrast with Buddhist teaching on anatta, or non-self. At the 2,500th anniversary of Mahavira's nirvana in 1974, the Svetambara, Digambara, and Sthanakavasi sects assembled on the same platform for the first time in their long history, adopted a common flag and emblem, and sent four dharma cakras across the major cities of India to win legal protections against the slaughter of animals.