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Jainism

Mahāvīra

महावीर · वर्धमान · Mahāvīra / Vardhamāna · Samaṇe Bhagavaṃ Mahāvīre / Vaddhamāṇe

c. 599 BCE – c. 527 BCEHistoricity debated

Ascetic and teacher of the Ganges valley, twenty-fourth and last tīrthaṅkara of Jainism, a somewhat older contemporary of the Buddha, who knew him as Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta. Named Vardhamāna, he renounced the world at thirty, attained omniscience after twelve years of asceticism and taught a path of non-violence, vows and austerity to free the soul from karma. He wrote nothing: the Jain canon transmitting his teaching was fixed at Valabhī in the fifth century CE.

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Busto de Mahāvīra, período kuṣāṇa (Museo de Chandigarh)

Busto de Mahāvīra, período kuṣāṇa (Museo de Chandigarh) · CC BY 3.0

In their words

«All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.»

Ācārāṅga I.4.1.1; trad. de Hermann Jacobi, SBE 22 (1884), verificada en el texto; versión española del investigador; palabras que el canon atribuye a Mahāvīra

Ācārāṅga (The Book of Conduct) — Mahāvīra

Their central idea

Non-violence (ahiṃsā): The central principle of Jain ethics and the first of the vows.

See in context

Biography

4 min read

The last of the ford-makers

For the Jains, Mahāvīra did not found a religion. He was the twenty-fourth and last tīrthaṅkara of this cycle of time, the last "ford-maker" who opens to beings the crossing over the river of existences, and his teaching renewed that of a predecessor, Pārśva, whose community already existed. His personal name was Vardhamāna, "the one who grows"; Mahāvīra, "great hero", is a title, like Jina, "the victor", from which his followers take their name. His historical existence is well established by an outside and hostile witness: the Buddhist texts in Pali frequently mention Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta, "the one of the Nāta clan, leader of those without bonds", as one of the Buddha's rival teachers, and ascribe to him doctrines that match Jain ones.

When he lived

Tradition places his death in 527 BCE, 470 years before the start of the Vikrama era, and his birth seventy-two years earlier, in 599. As early as the twelfth century the monk Hemacandra transmitted a different reckoning, which leads to 467 BCE and which Hermann Jacobi considered the most plausible. The Pali texts present Mahāvīra as a somewhat older contemporary of the Buddha, whose death at Pāvā reaches the Buddhist community as news, and present scholarship, which has moved the Buddha's dates down to the late fifth century BCE, tends to shift his as well. This entry keeps the traditional dates as a reference, warning that they may be a century earlier than the real ones.

Two biographies

What is known of his life comes from canonical texts composed and fixed centuries later, and the two great Jain communities do not tell the same story. The oldest witness is a poem of the Ācārāṅga, the first book of the canon, which describes the years of asceticism without wonders: the cold, the insects, the dogs the peasants of Lāḍha set on him, the silence with which he bore it. The full biography appears in the Kalpasūtra, ascribed to the master Bhadrabāhu, and it is the one followed by the Śvetāmbaras, the "white-clad". The Digambaras, the "sky-clad", have their own in Sanskrit texts of the eighth and ninth centuries, and they disagree on essential points: they deny that Mahāvīra's embryo was transferred from the womb of a brahmin woman to that of a queen, deny that he married and had a daughter, and hold that he renounced all clothing from the very first day.

What tradition relates

According to the Śvetāmbara account, he was born at Kuṇḍagrāma, near Vaiśālī, in present-day Bihar, son of Siddhārtha, a noble of the Jñātṛ clan, and of Triśalā, related to the chiefs of the Licchavi confederacy. Before his birth his mother saw fourteen auspicious dreams. He married Yaśodā and had a daughter, Priyadarśanā. At thirty, his parents dead, he tore out his hair and left home; for twelve and a half years he wandered as an ascetic, fasting for long periods and keeping silence, and after thirteen months he let fall the single cloth he wore. At forty-two, beside the river Ṛjupālikā, he attained omniscience (kevala). He taught for thirty years in the kingdoms of the Ganges; his eleven chief disciples, the gaṇadharas, were converted brahmins led by Indrabhūti Gautama, and the community included monks, nuns and lay people of both sexes. He died at seventy-two at Pāvā; that night, says the Kalpasūtra, the kings of the region lit lamps because the light of knowledge had gone out, and from this comes the Jain celebration of Dīpāvalī.

A teaching of non-violence

The universe, for Mahāvīra, is peopled by countless souls (jīva), not only in humans and animals but in plants, water, earth, fire and air; and every soul, by nature omniscient and blissful, is obscured by karma, which Jainism conceives as a subtle matter adhering to it through actions and passions. Hence the centrality of non-violence (ahiṃsā): "all beings are fond of life", says the Ācārāṅga, and to harm any of them is to bind oneself. The path consists in stopping the influx of new karma through the vows —non-harming, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity and detachment from all possessions— and in burning off what has accumulated through austerity, until the liberated soul rises to the summit of the universe. To the four vows of Pārśva's tradition Mahāvīra is said to have added chastity as a separate fifth vow, according to the dialogue between Keśin and Gautama in the Uttarādhyayana. There is no creator god in his teaching.

The canon and its fixing

Mahāvīra wrote nothing. According to tradition, his disciples gathered his teaching into twelve books, the Aṅgas, transmitted by memory; the twelfth, which contained the fourteen Pūrvas, was soon lost. After several councils, the Śvetāmbara canon was written down at Valabhī, in Gujarat, under the presidency of Devarddhigaṇi, 980 or 993 years after the master's death, that is, around 453 or 466 CE. Depending on the branch, it comprises 45 or 32 texts in Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit. The Digambaras regard the original canon as lost and revere the Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama and the Kasāyapāhuḍa as scripture. This entry records all these texts as compilations ascribed to Mahāvīra's teaching, not as works of his own.

The legacy

Hermann Jacobi's translations in the Sacred Books of the East (1884 and 1895) showed European Indology that Jainism was not a branch of Buddhism, as had been believed, but an independent and ancient tradition. Today the Jain community numbers a few million, mainly in western India, celebrates Mahāvīra's birth every spring and has influenced the ethics of non-violence beyond its borders: Gandhi acknowledged the mark left on his moral formation by the Jain jeweller and thinker Raychandbhai Mehta.

Sources: Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârâṅga Sûtra. The Kalpa Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 (Sacred Books of the East 22). Introducción y textos; reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801233). · Dundas, Paul. The Jains. 2.ª ed. Londres / Nueva York: Routledge, 2002 (Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices). ISBN 9780415266055. · Jaini, Padmanabh S. The Jaina Path of Purification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979; reimpr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998. ISBN 9788120815780. · Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part II: The Uttarâdhyayana Sûtra. The Sûtrakritâṅga Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895 (Sacred Books of the East 45). Reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801462). · Pániker, Agustín. El jainismo. Historia, sociedad, filosofía y práctica. Barcelona: Kairós, 2001; ed. 2007. ISBN 9788472454842.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. c. 599 BCE · age 0

    Birth at Kuṇḍagrāma (traditional date)

    Son of Siddhārtha and Triśalā according to the Kalpasūtra, which relates the mother's fourteen dreams and, in the Śvetāmbara version, the transfer of the embryo from the womb of the brahmin woman Devānandā. Traditional date; scholars lower it by up to a century.

    Tradition

  2. c. 569 BCE · age 30

    Renunciation

    At thirty, his parents dead, he tears out his hair in five handfuls and leaves home. The Śvetāmbaras hold that he had previously married Yaśodā and had a daughter; the Digambaras deny it.

    Tradition

  3. c. 569 BCE – 557 BCE

    Twelve and a half years of asceticism

    He wanders as an ascetic, fasts and keeps silence; the Ācārāṅga describes the hardships suffered in the land of the Lāḍhas. According to the Śvetāmbara tradition he spends six years with Gośāla Maṅkhaliputta, future head of the Ājīvikas.

    Tradition

  4. c. 557 BCE · age 42

    Omniscience

    At forty-two, beside the river Ṛjupālikā near Jṛmbhikagrāma, he attains absolute knowledge (kevala) and becomes a Jina.

    Tradition

  5. c. 557 BCE – 527 BCE

    Thirty years of teaching

    He teaches in the Ganges kingdoms; eleven brahmins led by Indrabhūti Gautama become his chief disciples (gaṇadharas). The Pali texts present him as a rival of the Buddha under the name Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta.

    Tradition

  6. c. 527 BCE · age 72

    Death at Pāvā (traditional date)

    He dies at seventy-two at Pāvā; the kings of the region light lamps, origin of the Jain celebration of Dīpāvalī. The Pali canon (DN 29) records the news of his death and the division of his followers.

    Disputed

  7. c. 453 BCE – 466 BCE

    The Council of Valabhī

    Under the presidency of Devarddhigaṇi Kṣamāśramaṇa, the Śvetāmbara canon is written down, 980 or 993 years after Mahāvīra's death according to the Kalpasūtra (§ 148).

    Probable

  8. c. 300 BCE

    Council of Pāṭaliputra

    According to tradition, after a great famine the monks who had stayed in Magadha assemble the Aṅgas at Pāṭaliputra under Sthūlabhadra while Bhadrabāhu is absent; the Digambaras do not recognise the result.

    Tradition

  9. c. 150 BCE

    The Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama

    Puṣpadanta and Bhūtabali write down in Śaurasenī Prakrit a treatise on karma that the Digambaras revere as their oldest scripture. Date much disputed (1st–3rd c.).

    Probable

  10. c. 80 BCE

    The Śvetāmbara–Digambara split

    The two traditions date their separation only three years apart: 609 years after Mahāvīra (82 CE) according to the Śvetāmbaras, 136 years after Vikrama (79 CE) according to the Digambaras. The actual division was a gradual process.

    Tradition

  11. c. 1160

    Hemacandra's life of Mahāvīra

    The monk Hemacandra (1089–1172) narrates Mahāvīra's life in the tenth book of the Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacarita and transmits the chronology placing his death 155 years before Candragupta.

    Probable

  12. 1884 – 1895

    Jacobi and the Sacred Books of the East

    Hermann Jacobi translates the Ācārāṅga and the Kalpasūtra (SBE 22, 1884) and, in 1895, the Uttarādhyayana and the Sūtrakṛtāṅga (SBE 45); he shows that Jainism is independent of Buddhism.

    Documented

  13. 1974

    2500 years since the nirvāṇa

    India officially celebrates the 2500th anniversary of Mahāvīra's nirvāṇa according to the traditional chronology, the occasion on which the different Jain branches adopt a common flag and emblem.

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Ācārāṅga (The Book of Conduct) — Mahāvīra

Later compilation

Ācārāṅga (The Book of Conduct)

आयारंग (Āyāraṃga) / आचाराङ्ग (Ācārāṅga)

The first Aṅga and probably the oldest Jain text, in two parts. The first, in archaic prose and verse, sets out non-violence towards all beings —including earth, water, fire, air and plants— and the ascetic's discipline; its ninth chapter, the "Uvahāṇasuya", is the oldest account of Mahāvīra's austerities. The second, later part regulates monastic life and adds a biography of the master.

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Later compilation

Sūtrakṛtāṅga (The Book of Doctrines)

सूयगड (Sūyagaḍa) / सूत्रकृताङ्ग (Sūtrakṛtāṅga)

The second Aṅga, also of an early stratum. It sets out and refutes the doctrines of the rival teachers of Mahāvīra's time —materialists, fatalists, agnostics, ritualists— and warns the monk against the world's temptations. It is a key source for the panorama of the ascetics of the Ganges valley in the time of Mahāvīra and the Buddha. The second part includes Ārdraka's dialogue with Gośāla and with a Buddhist.

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Traditional attribution

Kalpasūtra (Lives of the Jinas)

कप्पसुत्त (Kappasutta) / कल्पसूत्र (Kalpasūtra), también Pajjosavaṇākappa (Paryuṣaṇākalpa)

The eighth chapter of the Daśāśrutaskandha turned into an independent book, and the most copied and illustrated Jain text. It has three parts: the lives of the Jinas, above all Mahāvīra's —the transfer of the embryo, the fourteen dreams, renunciation, asceticism, omniscience and death at Pāvā—, the list of successors (sthavirāvalī) and the rules for the rainy-season retreat. It is read aloud every year during the festival of Paryuṣaṇa. The illuminated manuscripts from Gujarat of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries are held in museums around the world.

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Later compilation

Uttarādhyayana (The Last Lectures)

उत्तरज्झयण (Uttarajjhayaṇa) / उत्तराध्ययन (Uttarādhyayana)

Thirty-six lectures in verse and prose, one of the oldest and most beautiful texts of the canon, which tradition identifies with the "thirty-six unasked questions" Mahāvīra recited on the night of his death (Kalpasūtra § 147). It contains teachings on the monk's discipline, parables, King Nami's dialogue with Indra, the exhortation to Gautama "not to be careless for a moment" and the meeting of Keśin, a disciple of Pārśva, with Gautama, which explains the reform of the vows.

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3 editions

Complete works (51)

See all 51 works in the library

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

savve pāṇā savve bhūyā savve jīvā savve sattā na haṃtavvā na ajjāveyavvā na parighetavvā na pariyāveyavvā na uddaveyavvā

VerifiedĀcārāṅga I.4.1.1; trad. de Hermann Jacobi, SBE 22 (1884), verificada en el texto; versión española del investigador; palabras que el canon atribuye a Mahāvīra

1 / 8
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (2)

  • «Live and let live.»

    A slogan widely spread as a summary of Mahāvīra's teaching (in Hindi, "jiyo aur jīne do"), present on posters, stamps and twentieth-century celebrations. It is not a quotation from any canonical text; it condenses the doctrine of non-violence in a modern formula.

  • «Non-violence is the highest law (ahiṃsā paramo dharmaḥ).»

    A Sanskrit formula the Jain community has adopted as a motto and which is often ascribed to Mahāvīra. It appears in the Mahābhārata, in brahmanical contexts, and not in the Prakrit Jain canon, which expresses the idea in other words (see the Daśavaikālika quotation).

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

No final words of Mahāvīra survive. The Kalpasūtra (§ 147) says he died at Pāvā, alone and seated, while reciting the fifty-five lectures on the fruits of karma and the thirty-six "unasked questions", which tradition identifies with the Uttarādhyayana, but it quotes no sentence. For the Digambaras the omniscient Jina does not speak in human words but with a "divine sound" (divyadhvani), and he died in silent meditation.

Source: Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârâṅga Sûtra. The Kalpa Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 (Sacred Books of the East 22). Introducción y textos; reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801233).

Ask

What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    An eternal universe with no creator; the divine is the liberated soul

    No creator GodStated explicitly

    In the Jain canon attributed to him, Mahavira teaches that the universe is eternal and created by no god: it is made of souls (jiva) and non-living substances (ajiva) that follow their own laws. The Sutrakritanga examines and rejects the doctrines that ascribe the world to a creator god, to Brahma or to Ishvara. What Jainism venerates is not a lord of the cosmos but the tirthankaras, human souls who by their own effort shed karma and attained omniscience (kevala). These perfected souls do not intervene in the world or grant favours: they are model and guide. Liberation therefore depends on each soul’s conduct and knowledge, not on the will of a God.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    Each being is an eternal individual soul, veiled by karmic matter

    An evolving soulStated explicitly

    The Jainism that goes back to Mahavira affirms countless souls (jiva), eternal, uncreated and individual, whose nature is consciousness, knowledge and bliss. These qualities are veiled by subtle particles of karma that cling to the soul through action driven by the passions. The soul transmigrates through the four destinies (hells, animals and plants, humans and gods) and can be purified life after life. When it sheds all karma it attains omniscience and rises to the summit of the universe, where it keeps its individuality forever. The true self is neither body nor passions, but neither does it merge into an Absolute: it is a soul recovering its original purity.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    Karma, drawn by violence and passions, binds the soul to pain

    Karma and the soul's learningStated explicitly

    In the Jain canon suffering is explained by karma, understood as a subtle matter that flows into the soul when it acts driven by the passions (kashaya): anger, pride, deceit and greed. Violence is the action that attracts the most karma, and the Acaranga insists that all beings love life, desire pleasure and hate pain. Accumulated karma ripens into experiences of suffering in this life and the next. But Mahavira does not teach resignation: karma can be stopped through right conduct and destroyed through asceticism (tapas). Hardships voluntarily accepted by the monk burn up past karma. Pain is thus the consequence of one’s own acts and an occasion for purification.

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  • What happens after death?

    The soul transmigrates through four destinies until freed and ascending

    Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

    According to the Jain canon, at death the soul, drawn by its karma, is reborn in one of four destinies: the hells, animals and plants, humans or gods. None is final, not even the heavenly. Only the soul that has destroyed all its karma escapes the cycle and rises to the summit of the universe, where it abides in omniscience and bliss. The Uttaradhyayana recalls with the image of the dry leaf that human life is short and must not be wasted: Gautama must not be careless for a single moment. The tradition also values voluntary death by fasting (sallekhana), accepted in full awareness and without passion when life can no longer sustain the practice.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    Right faith, knowledge and conduct; asceticism that burns karma

    Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

    Mahavira’s path, as handed down by the Jain canon, is one of self-effort. Chapter 28 of the Uttaradhyayana, devoted to the road to liberation, sums it up as right knowledge, faith, conduct and asceticism. Conduct takes concrete form in the monk’s five great vows: non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity and non-possession. Asceticism (tapas), inner and outer, destroys accumulated karma, and vigilance prevents new karma from entering. No one can do this work for another; one of the sayings attributed to him asks one to fight oneself rather than external enemies, since conquering oneself is the greatest victory. The fruit is omniscience (kevala) and final liberation.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    The Jina shows the ford, but each soul crosses alone

    Helpful but not indispensableStated explicitly

    For Jains Mahavira is a tirthankara, a ‘ford-maker’ who shows the crossing through the ocean of rebirths. His teaching was handed down by his chief disciples (ganadharas) and is preserved in a fourfold community of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen, with detailed rules of obedience to superiors and of communal life. But the teacher neither saves nor grants grace: the Acaranga says, in a line recorded among his sayings, that one is one’s own friend and need not seek friends outside. The tirthankara teaches and gives example, the community sustains, and the work of purifying the soul is done by each through their own effort.

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  • Is the world real?

    An eternal universe of substances that endure and change

    Natural order in transformationStated explicitly

    Jainism teaches that the world is real, eternal and uncreated, made up of six substances: souls, matter, the principle of motion, that of rest, space and time. Each substance endures in its essence while its modes arise and pass away: everything is at once permanent and changing. The universe passes through immense cycles of ascent and descent, without beginning or end, and is ordered in regions: the hells below, the middle world of humans and the heavens above. This vision goes with the doctrine of many-sidedness (anekantavada): no statement about reality exhausts it. The world is no illusion, but its truth requires looking at it from many sides.

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  • What is love?

    Friendship with all beings, enmity towards none

    Boundless compassionStated explicitly

    Love, in Mahavira’s Jainism, takes the form of universal non-violence. The Acaranga grounds it in reciprocity: all beings love life, desire pleasure and shrink from pain, and therefore no breathing being should be killed, mistreated or tormented. The confession formula preserved in the Avasyaka, which Jains recite every year, asks forgiveness of all beings, forgives them and declares friendship with all and enmity towards none. That benevolence extends to insects, plants and invisible beings, and demands meticulous care in every act. Affective attachment, by contrast, is considered a binding passion: Jain love is benevolence without possession.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    Against fatalism: human effort changes the course of karma

    Karma and choiceStated explicitly

    Mahavira shared his time and setting with Makkhali Gosala, head of the Ajivikas, who taught that everything is determined by fate (niyati) and that human effort is useless. The Jain canon presents him as Mahavira’s great adversary. In the Upasakadasa Mahavira refutes a potter who follows Gosala with a practical argument: if someone broke his pots, would he punish them or think it was all determined? For Jainism karma truly conditions the present, but the soul can stop its inflow through vigilance and destroy it through asceticism. Effort (purushartha) is real and decisive: without it the doctrine of liberation would make no sense.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    The daily duties: equanimity, confession and abandonment of the body

    Ritual and self-cultivationStated explicitly

    Jainism does not pray to a God who answers: the liberated tirthankaras do not intervene in the world. Their veneration is a remembrance of their example. Daily practice is organised in the six obligatory duties preserved in the Avasyaka: equanimity (samayika), praise of the tirthankaras, veneration of the teacher, confession of faults (pratikramana), motionless abandonment of the body (kayotsarga) and voluntary renunciation. Tradition attributes to Mahavira long periods of motionless meditation in which he bore cold, heat and assaults without reacting. Meditation serves to stop the inflow of karma and burn what has accumulated, and ultimately leads to omniscience.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    The pure soul’s omniscience surpasses all sensory and textual knowledge

    The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

    Jain epistemology, which the canon attributes to Mahavira’s teaching, distinguishes five kinds of knowledge: sensory and mental, scriptural, clairvoyance, knowledge of others’ minds and omniscience (kevala). The first two are indirect, mediated by senses and mind; the last is direct, proper to the soul freed from all karma, and knows all things in all their modes. Mahavira is said to have attained it after twelve years of asceticism. Meanwhile human reasoning is partial, and the doctrine of many-sidedness (anekantavada) teaches one not to absolutise any statement. Reason is useful and necessary, but the ultimate is seen only by the purified soul.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    The monk’s total renunciation is the path; the layperson follows halfway

    Withdraw in order to findStated explicitly

    According to the Kalpa Sutra and the Acaranga, Mahavira left his princely life at thirty, renounced his possessions and wandered for twelve years as an ascetic, enduring hunger, cold and assault, until he attained omniscience. The path he taught has renunciation at its centre: the monk’s five great vows demand owning nothing and leaving family life. Laypeople keep milder versions of those vows and support the monastic community, but their liberation lies through a future renunciation. This withdrawal is not indifference to the world: non-violence towards every living being is its way of relating to it.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Hagiographic accountconcepción (fecha tradicional c. 600 a. C.)

The transferred embryo

According to the Kalpasūtra, the soul of the future Mahāvīra descended from heaven and entered the womb of Devānandā, wife of the brahmin Ṛṣabhadatta. Śakra, king of the gods, reflected that no tīrthaṅkara had ever been born into a brahmin family, but always into a warrior one, and ordered the god Hariṇaigameṣin to transfer the embryo to the womb of Queen Triśalā, while hers passed to Devānandā's. The two women saw in dreams fourteen auspicious images —an elephant, a bull, a lion, the goddess Śrī, the sun, the moon—, and Devānandā dreamt that they were taken from her. The episode, frequent in illustrated manuscripts, asserts the superiority of the kṣatriyas over the brahmins; the Digambaras reject it as unworthy of a tīrthaṅkara.

Origin of the story: Kalpasūtra, Life of Mahāvīra, §§ 2–31 (trans. Jacobi, SBE 22), also in the second part of the Ācārāṅga. Exclusive to the Śvetāmbara tradition.

Source: Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârâṅga Sûtra. The Kalpa Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 (Sacred Books of the East 22). Introducción y textos; reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801233).

Oral traditionaños de ascesis (c. 569–557 a. C., fechas tradicionales)

The dogs of Lāḍha

The oldest account of Mahāvīra's life contains no wonders. A poem of the Ācārāṅga relates that the ascetic, always watchful, bore cutting grass, cold, fire, flies and gnats; that he travelled through the rough country of the Lāḍhas, where peasants beat him and set dogs on him, and that, while other mendicants carried a stick to defend themselves, he renounced every instrument of violence and endured, "like an elephant at the head of the battle", the abuse of the villages. The text shows him meditating in deserted places, eating what he was given and neither scratching nor caring for his body.

Origin of the story: Ācārāṅga I.9 ("Uvahāṇasuya"), 3.1–3.8 (trans. Jacobi, SBE 22), the oldest stratum of the canon according to scholarship. Lāḍha is identified with the region of Rāḍha, in western Bengal.

Source: Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârâṅga Sûtra. The Kalpa Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 (Sacred Books of the East 22). Introducción y textos; reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801233).

Disputedc. 560–540 a. C. (fechas tradicionales)

Gośāla, the companion who became a rival

During his years of asceticism Mahāvīra had a companion: Gośāla Maṅkhaliputta, son of a picture-showman, who followed him for six years. They parted, and Gośāla founded his own community, that of the Ājīvikas, who taught that everything is determined by fate. According to book 15 of the Bhagavatī, years later Gośāla appeared before Mahāvīra at Śrāvastī, denied having been his disciple and hurled a magic fire at him; the fire turned against Gośāla, who died seven days later in delirium. It is a sectarian account: Arthur Basham, historian of the Ājīvikas, uses it with caution, although Gośāla's school existed and had caves dedicated to it by the emperor Aśoka.

Origin of the story: Bhagavatī Sūtra, book 15, and the Āvaśyaka-cūrṇi; critical study in Basham (1951). Buddhist texts mention Makkhali Gosāla as another of the Buddha's six rival teachers.

Source: Basham, A. L. History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion. Londres: Luzac, 1951.

Hagiographic accountnoche de la muerte de Mahāvīra

Gautama's night

Indrabhūti Gautama, the first and closest of Mahāvīra's disciples, was a learned brahmin who, according to tradition, had come to refute him and stayed to listen. For thirty years he was his interlocutor in the canon: almost all the questions of the Bhagavatī are his. Yet he did not attain omniscience. On the night Mahāvīra died, says the Kalpasūtra, Gautama was far away, sent to convert someone; on hearing the news he understood that his affection for his master was the last tie holding him back, cut it and at that moment obtained perfect knowledge. He lived another twelve years. The story expresses simply the Jain demand for detachment, which reaches even the bond with one's own teacher.

Origin of the story: Kalpasūtra, Life of Mahāvīra, § 127, and Jacobi's note (SBE 22); Indrabhūti's arrival to debate is narrated in the commentarial literature (Āvaśyaka-niryukti).

Source: Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârâṅga Sûtra. The Kalpa Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 (Sacred Books of the East 22). Introducción y textos; reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801233).

Hagiographic accountmuerte (527 a. C. según la tradición)

The lamps of Pāvā

Mahāvīra died at Pāvā on the new-moon night of the month of Kārttika. That night, the Kalpasūtra relates, the eighteen confederate kings of Kāśī and Kosala, nine of the Mallas and nine of the Licchavis, who were keeping the fast, instituted an illumination, for they said: "Since the light of intelligence is gone, let us make an illumination of material matter!" Since then the Jains have celebrated on that date the festival of Dīpāvalī as the anniversary of Mahāvīra's nirvāṇa, and on the following day they commemorate Gautama's omniscience, with a meaning different from the one the festival has for Hindus.

Origin of the story: Kalpasūtra, Life of Mahāvīra, § 128 (trans. Jacobi, SBE 22, quotation verified in the text); on the Jain celebration of Dīpāvalī, Dundas (2002).

Source: Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârâṅga Sûtra. The Kalpa Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 (Sacred Books of the East 22). Introducción y textos; reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801233).

Disputedfinales de la vida de Mahāvīra

Nātaputta as seen by the Buddhists

The Pali canon preserves an image of Mahāvīra from outside, and not a kind one. In the Upāli Sutta, a wealthy Jain layman, Upāli, goes to refute the Buddha on behalf of Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta and ends up converted; when the Jain master learns of it, the Buddhist text says, he vomits hot blood. In the Pāsādika Sutta news arrives that Nātaputta has just died at Pāvā and that his disciples have split and wound each other with barbed words, and the Buddha takes the opportunity to remind his own that they must recite the teaching together to avoid the same fate. These are polemical accounts, but they confirm that Mahāvīra was a real figure, a contemporary and competitor of the Buddha, and that he died at Pāvā.

Origin of the story: Upāli Sutta (MN 56) and Pāsādika Sutta (DN 29), in Bhikkhu Sujato's translations (SuttaCentral, CC0). A Buddhist and polemical witness; the death at Pāvā agrees with Jain tradition.

Source: Upāli Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya 56), trad. Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0), SuttaCentral.

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Non-violence (ahiṃsā)ahimsa
The central principle of Jain ethics and the first of the vows. Its scope is wider than in any other Indian tradition because Jainism ascribes souls not only to humans and animals but to the one-sensed beings inhabiting earth, water, fire, air and plants. The Ācārāṅga grounds the principle on a shared evidence: all beings love life and hate pain, and harming them is harming oneself, because violence binds the soul with karma. Hence characteristic monastic practices, such as filtering water, sweeping the ground before stepping, not eating at night or covering the mouth, and the dietary and professional restrictions of lay people. Gandhi received part of his idea of non-violence from the Jain tradition.

Ācārāṅga I.1–I.4; Sūtrakṛtāṅga I.11; Daśavaikālika 1.1.

Source: Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârâṅga Sûtra. The Kalpa Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 (Sacred Books of the East 22). Introducción y textos; reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801233).

Soul and non-soul (jīva and ajīva)jiva-ajiva
Jain ontology divides reality into the living (jīva) and the non-living (ajīva): matter, space, time and the principles of motion and rest. Souls are countless, eternal and individual; by nature they possess infinite knowledge, perception, energy and bliss, but they are limited by karma and take the size of the body they occupy. They are classified by the number of senses, from one to five, and by destiny: hell-beings, animals and plants, humans and gods. There is no universal soul and no creator god: the universe is eternal and runs by its own laws. This classification, already present in the Ācārāṅga, is systematised in the Jīvājīvābhigama and the Prajñāpanā.

Ācārāṅga I.1; Jīvājīvābhigama; Prajñāpanā; Uttarādhyayana 36.

Source: Jaini, Padmanabh S. The Jaina Path of Purification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979; reimpr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998. ISBN 9788120815780.

Karma as matterkarma-jaina
Unlike the other Indian traditions, Jainism conceives karma as an extremely subtle material substance filling the universe, which adheres to the soul when it acts moved by the passions —anger, pride, deceit and greed. The process has precise stages: influx (āsrava), binding (bandha), stoppage (saṃvara) through vows and vigilance, elimination (nirjarā) through austerity, and liberation (mokṣa) when the soul is free of every particle. The doctrine classifies karmas into eight types according to which quality of the soul they obscure. The Digambara Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama and Kasāyapāhuḍa are great treatises on this theory.

Uttarādhyayana 33; Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama; systematised in Umāsvāti's Tattvārthasūtra.

Source: Jaini, Padmanabh S. The Jaina Path of Purification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979; reimpr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998. ISBN 9788120815780.

The five great vows (mahāvrata)mahavrata
Jain monks and nuns take five absolute vows: not to harm any being, not to lie, not to take what has not been given, complete chastity and detachment from all possession. Lay people observe attenuated versions, the "lesser vows" (aṇuvrata), with others added to make twelve, as the Upāsakadaśā describes. According to the dialogue between Keśin and Gautama in the Uttarādhyayana, Pārśva's tradition had four vows and Mahāvīra separated chastity as a fifth, besides requiring nudity; the text explains this by the different capacities of the disciples of each age. The yamas of Patañjali's Yogasūtra coincide with these five vows.

Ācārāṅga II.15; Uttarādhyayana 23; Upāsakadaśā.

Source: Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part II: The Uttarâdhyayana Sûtra. The Sûtrakritâṅga Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895 (Sacred Books of the East 45). Reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801462).

Tīrthaṅkara (ford-maker)tirthankara
The title of the twenty-four teachers who, in each half of the cosmic cycle, attain omniscience and "make a ford" (tīrtha) to cross the ocean of existences, that is, refound the community of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen. The first of our era was Ṛṣabha; the twenty-third, Pārśva, whom many historians regard as a historical figure earlier than Mahāvīra; the twenty-fourth, Mahāvīra. For the Jains, therefore, Mahāvīra is not a founder but the last renewer of an eternal doctrine. The tīrthaṅkaras are not creator gods and do not intervene in the world: they are revered as liberated models, and their lives follow a common pattern of five auspicious events.

Kalpasūtra (lives of the Jinas); Samavāyāṅga; Jambūdvīpaprajñapti.

Source: Dundas, Paul. The Jains. 2.ª ed. Londres / Nueva York: Routledge, 2002 (Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices). ISBN 9780415266055.

Omniscience (kevala-jñāna)kevala
The "isolated" or absolute knowledge the soul regains when the karmas obscuring its qualities are destroyed: it knows simultaneously all substances and all their modes, past, present and future. Mahāvīra attained it at forty-two; whoever possesses it is a kevalin and, if he also founds the community, a tīrthaṅkara. At death the kevalin is freed from all remaining karma and his soul rises to the summit of the universe, where it abides in bliss. Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras disagree on whether the kevalin eats and whether women can attain this state. The Jain claim to omniscience was the subject of long debates with Buddhists and Mīmāṃsakas.

Kalpasūtra § 120–121; Nandīsūtra (the five kinds of knowledge).

Source: Jaini, Padmanabh S. The Jaina Path of Purification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979; reimpr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998. ISBN 9788120815780.

Many-sidedness (anekāntavāda)anekantavada
The doctrine that reality has countless aspects and no judgement exhausts it: every assertion is true from a standpoint (naya) and must be completed by others. Its logical form, syādvāda, formulates seven conditioned predications ("in a certain sense it is", "in a certain sense it is not"…). Its systematisation is the work of later masters —Kundakunda, Siddhasena, Samantabhadra, Haribhadra—, but tradition ascribes it to Mahāvīra, and the Bhagavatī contains answers of his that distinguish standpoints, for instance in saying that the world is eternal in one sense and not eternal in another. Pániker presents it as the basis of Jain philosophical pluralism.

Bhagavatī Sūtra; Anuyogadvāra (the nayas); later development in the 5th–8th centuries.

Source: Pániker, Agustín. El jainismo. Historia, sociedad, filosofía y práctica. Barcelona: Kairós, 2001; ed. 2007. ISBN 9788472454842.

Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • What is Jainism?

    Analysis· EN· 2021· 28 min

    Let's Talk Religion

  • 2 Mahavira and the Fordmakers

    Lecture· EN· 2020· 56 min

    Dr. Christopher Miller

  • Session 1 - Textual Studies, 17th Jaina Studies Workshop, SOAS, University of London

    Lecture· EN· 2015· 55 min

    SOAS University of LondonOfficial channel

  • 19th Jaina Studies Workshop, Jainism and Buddhism, Session 1, SOAS University of London

    Lecture· EN· 2017· 113 min

    SOAS University of LondonOfficial channel

  • In Conversation with Professor Padmanabh S. Jaini: Jaina and Buddhist Karma Theory – Part 1

    Interview· EN· 2022· 53 min

    SahapediaOfficial channel

  • Inaugural Bhagwaan Mahavir Lecture in Jain Studies | Feb. 3, 2023 lecture by Anil Mundra

    Lecture· EN· 2023· 70 min

    Rice Humanities and ArtsOfficial channel

  • Jain Manuscripts: A Unique Cultural Heritage

    Lecture· EN· 2025· 70 min

    University of Toronto Mississauga AlumniOfficial channel

  • Prof. Nalini Balbir on Illustrated Manuscripts of a 17th-Century Jain Tale

    Lecture· EN· 2023· 40 min

    Pure Soul Exhibition @ SOAS LondonOfficial channel

  • Jaïnisme - leçon 2 : Origines

    Lecture· FR· 2022· 21 min

    Jaïnisme - Une introduction

  • II Módulo Ciencias contemplativas. Agustín Pániker. El Jainismo: La religión de la no violencia

    Lecture· ES· 2024· 68 min

    Javier García Campayo

  • Agustín Pániker: «Pluralismo filosófico en el Jainismo»

    Watch on YouTube

    This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.

    Agustín Pániker: «Pluralismo filosófico en el Jainismo»

    Lecture· ES· 2022· 59 min

    Raquel Ferrández

  • Frontiers of Peace, Jainism

    Watch on YouTube

    This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.

    Frontiers of Peace, Jainism

    Documentary· EN· 80 min

    Edward Bastian FilmsOfficial channel

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • PRA · Devanagari (escritura jaina) · Redacción final c. 453/466 d. C. (Valabhī)

    कल्पसूत्र (Kalpasūtra), manuscrito iluminado

    Surviving witness
    Manuscrito en papel con oro y pigmentos, Gujarat, fechado en 1461 (Saṃvat 1519)
    Custodian
    Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nueva York

  • PRA · Devanagari (escritura jaina) · Redacción final c. 453/466 d. C.

    कल्पसूत्र (Kalpasūtra), manuscrito iluminado

    Surviving witness
    Folios ilustrados de Gujarat, c. 1460–1500
    Custodian
    Victoria and Albert Museum, Londres
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Contemporary of

    Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

    Contemporaries and rivals in the Ganges valley. The Pali canon mentions Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta among the six non-Buddhist teachers (DN 2), narrates the conversion of his lay follower Upāli (MN 56) and the news of his death at Pāvā (DN 29). No personal meeting is recorded.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Pārśva (Pārśvanātha)

    The twenty-third tīrthaṅkara, whose community existed before Mahāvīra; the Uttarādhyayana (23) narrates the meeting of his disciple Keśin with Gautama and the adoption of the fifth vow.

    Documented relation

  • Teacher of

    Indrabhūti Gautama

    His first and chief disciple (gaṇadhara), interlocutor of almost the whole Bhagavatī; he attained omniscience on the night of Mahāvīra's death according to the Kalpasūtra.

    Documented relation

  • Teacher of

    Sudharman

    The gaṇadhara who, according to the Śvetāmbara tradition, transmitted the Aṅgas to his disciple Jambū and from whom the monastic lineages descend.

    Documented relation

  • Disagreed with

    Gośāla Maṅkhaliputta

    Companion in asceticism for six years and later a rival, founder of the Ājīvikas; the Bhagavatī (book 15) narrates his break with Mahāvīra.

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Patañjali

    The five restraints (yama) of the Yogasūtra coincide with the five great Jain vows, and the text calls them the "great vow" when kept without exception; Chapple (2003) studies the dialogue between yoga and Jainism.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Nāgārjuna

    Jain pluralism of standpoints and Nāgārjuna's four-cornered analysis are often compared as Indian answers to absolute assertions, although they start from opposite assumptions.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Disagreed with

    Adi Shankara

    Posthumous relation: Śaṅkara refutes the Jain doctrine of multiple predication (syādvāda) and the variable size of the soul in his commentary on Brahmasūtra 2.2.33–36.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Mahatma Gandhi

    Indirect influence, through the Jain tradition: Gandhi acknowledged in his autobiography the mark of the Jain thinker Raychandbhai Mehta on his moral formation and his idea of non-violence.

    Documented relation

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârâṅga Sûtra. The Kalpa Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 (Sacred Books of the East 22). Introducción y textos; reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801233).
  2. Wikidata, «Mahavira», QID Q9422 (líder religioso indio). No confundir con Q2269861, el matemático jaina Mahāvīra (s. IX).
  3. Dundas, Paul. The Jains. 2.ª ed. Londres / Nueva York: Routledge, 2002 (Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices). ISBN 9780415266055.
  4. Jaini, Padmanabh S. The Jaina Path of Purification. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979; reimpr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998. ISBN 9788120815780.
  5. Jacobi, Hermann (trad.). Gaina Sûtras, Part II: The Uttarâdhyayana Sûtra. The Sûtrakritâṅga Sûtra. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895 (Sacred Books of the East 45). Reimpr. Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 9788120801462).
  6. Pániker, Agustín. El jainismo. Historia, sociedad, filosofía y práctica. Barcelona: Kairós, 2001; ed. 2007. ISBN 9788472454842.
  7. Hoernle, A. F. Rudolf (ed. y trad.). The Uvâsagadasâo, or the Religious Profession of an Uvâsaga, being the Seventh Anga of the Jains. 2 vols. Calcuta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1885–1890 (Bibliotheca Indica). Vol. II: traducción inglesa (1888).
  8. Pāsādika Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 29), trad. Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0), SuttaCentral: noticia de la muerte de Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta en Pāvā y de la división de sus discípulos.
  9. Upāli Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya 56), trad. Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0), SuttaCentral.
  10. Sāmaññaphala Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 2), trad. Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0), SuttaCentral: doctrina atribuida a Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta.
  11. Schubring, Walther. The Doctrine of the Jainas, Described after the Old Sources. Trad. Wolfgang Beurlen. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1962 (original alemán: Die Lehre der Jainas, 1935).
  12. Wiley, Kristi L. Historical Dictionary of Jainism. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2004.
  13. Basham, A. L. History and Doctrines of the Ājīvikas: A Vanished Indian Religion. Londres: Luzac, 1951.
  14. Wisdom Library, textos de las traducciones de Hermann Jacobi (Ācārāṅga, Kalpasūtra, Uttarādhyayana, Sūtrakṛtāṅga) con índice de capítulos, consultados el 2026-10-25 para verificar las citas.
  15. Wikimedia Commons, ficheros de imagen citados en images[] (licencias comprobadas por la API imageinfo el 2026-10-25).
  16. Open Library (openlibrary.org), fichas por ISBN y búsquedas por autor y título consultadas el 2026-10-25.
  17. Long, Jeffrey D. Jainism: An Introduction. Londres: I. B. Tauris, 2009.
  18. Chapple, Christopher Key. Reconciling Yogas: Haribhadra's Collection of Views on Yoga. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. ISBN 9780791458990.
  19. Lalwani, Kastur Chand (trad.). Kalpa Sūtra of Bhadrabāhu Svāmī. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979. ISBN 9780861862306.
  20. Gandhi, M. K. An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1927–1929, parte II, cap. 1 («Raychandbhai»).
  21. Thibaut, George (trad.). The Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary by Śaṅkarâkârya, Part I. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890 (Sacred Books of the East 34), comentario a Brahmasūtra 2.2.33–36 (refutación de la doctrina jaina).
Rights holder
Textos canónicos prácritos en dominio público. Las traducciones de Hermann Jacobi (1884, 1895), A. F. R. Hoernle (1888) y L. D. Barnett (1907, sujeta a cautela en la UE y España por la muerte del traductor en 1960) son anteriores; las modernas tienen derechos propios: Motilal Banarsidass (Lalwani y reimpresiones de los SBE), Dover, Routledge (Dundas), University of California Press y Motilal (Jaini), Kairós (Pániker), Jain Vishva Bharati y Prakrit Bharati Academy (traducciones del canon).

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • Fechas: se conservan las tradicionales (599–527 a. C.) con precisión aproximada; Hemacandra lleva la muerte a c. 467 a. C. (preferida por Jacobi) y la crítica reciente, a finales del s. V a. C. Comprobar en Dundas (2002), cap. 2, la datación exacta que propone.
  • Ediciones en español: no se ha encontrado en Open Library ninguna traducción castellana de textos del canon jaina (Ācārāṅga, Kalpasūtra, Uttarādhyayana); solo el estudio de Agustín Pániker (Kairós). Verificar en la BNE y en catálogos latinoamericanos.
  • Ediciones con ISBN de las traducciones modernas del canon (Jain Vishva Bharati, Prakrit Bharati Academy, Āgama Prakāśana Samiti) para los Aṅga y Upāṅga menores: no verificadas.
  • Sala de lectura: localizar la URL exacta de un escaneo con OCR limpio de la traducción de Barnett (1907; con cautela de derechos) y textos de dominio público de los demás Aṅga y Upāṅga. No hay textos en español de dominio público.
  • Manuscritos: obtener las signaturas (números de acceso) del Kalpasūtra de 1461 en el Metropolitan Museum y de los folios del Victoria and Albert Museum.
  • Las listas de los diez Prakīrṇaka y de los Mūlasūtra varían según las fuentes; se registra la lista habitual de los mūrtipūjaka (Dundas, Wiley).

Researched on 2026-10-25