Chapter 86. Jainism: Mahavira, the Tirthankaras and the Ethic of Absolute Non-Violence

Of the śramaṇa (“striver”) movements that challenged Brahmanical ritualism in the Ganges valley in the middle of the first millennium BCE, Jainism took renunciation to its furthest point. It holds that the soul (jiva) is bound by a subtle karmic matter that can be shed only by austerity. It extends non-injury (ahimsa) to water, fire, earth and wind. Its ideal saint ends his life by fasting. It is also a religion of merchants and bankers, patrons of temples and animal hospitals, and its doctrine of non-violence reached twentieth-century politics through Gandhi. This chapter sets out the library’s account of the Tirthankara cosmology, the life and dating of Mahavira, the doctrine of soul and karma, the five great vows, the scriptures and the Digambara/Svetambara schism, the southward migration, and the modern export of ahimsa.

The Tirthankaras: an Eternal Faith and Its Ford-Makers

Jains do not regard their religion as founded in history. The Sacred Places of the World compilation states: “According to Jain beliefs, their faith is eternal and has been revealed through the successive ages of the world by twenty-four Tirthankaras. The word Tirthankara means ‘Ford maker’ and is a title given to the (mostly mythical) enlightened sages of Jainism.” It compares them to the avatars of Hinduism, “in that their function is to instruct and inspire humankind” [Unknown (ed.), Sacred Places of the World, #48913, Jain section]. Van Voorst glosses the term as “Ford-finder”, “a person who goes across the river of the world’s misery to Nirvana”, and notes that “Jains believe that Mahavira was the last of twenty-four Tirthankaras” [Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures, #63227, ch. 4 “Jainism”].

On how Mahavira relates to this series, Rajendar Menen writes that Mahavira is “often and erroneously considered to be the founder of the Jain religion but actually the 24th Tirthankara (ford-maker), he is credited with the founding of modern Jainism” [Menen, The Healing Power of Mudras, #62132, “Hindu Deities and Mudra Practice”]. Osho, discussing his own role as a teacher, describes the imbalance in Jain devotion: “People missed with Rishabhdeva, the first Jaina tirthankara, but they could recognize Mahavira… Jainas don’t think much of the first, Rishabhdeva. In fact, their whole homage is paid to Mahavira. To the Western mind, Mahavira is the originator of Jainism.” He adds of himself: “I am not like Mahavira, but like Rishabhdeva” [Osho, The Heart of Yoga, #63135]. D. M. Thornton, writing in 1898, gives a more historical version. Hermann Jacobi held that the religion “was probably founded by Parsvanath, now revered as the twenty-third Jina; and merely reformed by Mahavira”. Thornton cites the “four vows of Parsva” as distinct from Mahavira’s five as evidence that “followers of Parsva actually existed at the time of Mahavira” [Thornton, Parsi, Jaina and Sikh, #55051, ch. II]. Thornton also notes that Jain temple worship favours “the first, twenty-third, and twenty-fourth” Tirthankaras. This partly qualifies Osho’s claim that Rishabha is neglected.

Mahavira: Life and Dates

The Encyclopedia of Hinduism chronology gives “Birth of Mahavira Vardhamana (c. 599-527), 24th Tirthankara, Jain master”. One of its entries speaks of a mountain “visited and blessed in the sixth century B.C.E. by MAHAVIRA, the 24th and last Jain TIRTHANKARA of this half of the cosmic era” [Jones & Ryan, Encyclopedia of Hinduism, #42241, Chronology]. The reference shelf records that the sects disagree. Both accept the birth year of 599 BCE, but Svetambaras place his death in 527 BCE and Digambaras in 510 BCE. Following Hemachandra, some historians date him to 549-477 BCE or to a death around 468-467 BCE. Because Mahavira was a slightly older contemporary of the Buddha, scholars who adopt the “short chronology” for the Buddha move him later still: Dundas proposes a death “around 425 BCE”, and Long proposes c. 499-427 BCE [Wikipedia: Mahavira]. The Romanian UNESCO course gives his death as 480 BCE. It says he left a community of 14,000 monks, 36,000 nuns and 377,000 lay followers, and that its leadership passed to his disciples, the ganadharas (“leaders of the assembly”) [UNESCO course, Istoria Religiilor pentru master, #81379, Jainism section; Wikipedia: Ganadhara].

The Acaranga Sutra, which Van Voorst calls “the most reliable Jaina story of Mahavira”, narrates his birth to the Kshatriya woman Trisala. His parents “were worshippers of Parsva and followers of the Sramanas” and ended their own lives by ritual fasting. After thirty years as a householder, Mahavira gave away his wealth and resolved: “I shall for twelve years neglect my body and abandon the care of it.” In the thirteenth year, “in a squatting position with joined heels exposing himself to the heat of the sun”, he reached “the full, unobstructed, unimpeded, infinite, and supreme knowledge and intuition called Kevala” [Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures, #63227, “The Life of Mahavira”, Acaranga Sutra 2.15]. Thornton summarises the biography in contrast with the Buddha’s. Mahavira waited until his father’s death and left “with the consent of those in power”. He practised austerities for twelve years against the Buddha’s six, and for about eleven of them “seems to have gone about naked”. He then taught for thirty years under the patronage of the kings of Videha, Magadha and Anga, and died at Papa. “Whereas Buddha… looked upon those six years as wasted time”, Mahavira “was still convinced of the necessity of asceticism” [Thornton, Parsi, Jaina and Sikh, #55051, “Mahavira and Buddha”].

Soul, Karmic Matter and Liberation

The UNESCO course states the central mechanism: “earthly existence is a true bondage and is a consequence of the law of deeds. The deed is a subtle form of matter that ‘clings’ to the soul.” Liberated souls do not merge into an impersonal absolute “similar to Brahman or Nirvana” but “will subsist individually in absolute isolation (kaivalya)”. It adds: “Mahavira was convinced that to free oneself it is necessary to lead a strict ascetic life, and to maintain the purity and integrity of the soul, ahimsa must be practised” [UNESCO course, #81379, Jainism section, trans. from Romanian]. Thornton sets out the nine tattva. Jiva (life) is “always adapted to the body it animates, diminishing with the gnat and expanding with the elephant”. Ajiva is the non-living. The list continues through merit, demerit, influx (asrava), stoppage (samvara), the burning off of karma by penance (nirjara) and bondage (bandha), “as of milk with water”, and ends with moksha, “profound calm, as of a fire gone out”. Jains, he notes, “stand alone in maintaining that souls are to be found ‘in apparently lifeless masses, in stone, in clods of earth, in drops of water, in fire, and in wind'”. The path consists of the three jewels: right faith, right knowledge and right conduct [Thornton, Parsi, Jaina and Sikh, #55051, “Leading Jaina Doctrines of To-day”].

Ahimsa in Its Strictest Form

The UNESCO course calls ahimsa the supreme virtue: “Although we meet it both in Buddhism and in Hinduism, in the Jain context it is an extremely elaborated doctrine” [UNESCO course, #81379]. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism agrees: “The Jains were the most radical in this regard, and their monks were enjoined to sweep their path clear with whisks to prevent stepping on insects” [Jones & Ryan, Encyclopedia of Hinduism, #42241, “Ahimsa”]. The first great vow taken by monks and nuns reads: “I renounce all killing of living beings, whether tiny or large, whether movable or immovable. I myself shall not kill living beings nor cause others to do it, nor consent to it.” The Uttaradhyayana Sutra draws practical consequences from this. A monk must not build a house, because “many living beings both movable and immovable… are killed when a house is being built”. He must not cook or light a fire: “Nothing is so dangerous as fire”. Van Voorst observes that although the texts speak of compassion, “the main motivation is less altruistic—to avoid as much as possible one’s collection of karma” [Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures, #63227, “Rules for Monastic Life”, “The Five Great Vows”]. For laymen, Thornton reports, agriculture itself is forbidden “as an injury to the ‘earth-body'”, and “even the ordering another man to plough a field is stigmatized as a sin” [Thornton, Parsi, Jaina and Sikh, #55051].

Scriptures, Sects and the Great Schism

Van Voorst explains that the canon, called Agama (“Tradition”) or Siddhanta (“Doctrine”), descends from a “sacred sound” Mahavira emitted on reaching Nirvana. It was handed on orally among monks “until about 500 C.E., when they were written down”. The original fourteen Purvas are “now all lost”, and “the difficulties among the two sects and within each sect’s canon are traced to the loss of these books”. The Svetambara (“white-clad”) branch, the larger, “teaches that a woman can achieve Nirvana without having to be reborn as a man; thus, this group has an order of nuns”. The Digambara (“sky-clad” or naked) branch “teaches that women cannot achieve Nirvana” and has its own canon (Mulacara, Samayasara and others). The familiar count of forty-five Svetambara texts in six groups “was largely the work of the nineteenth-century German scholar Georg Buhler”, a scheme now “called into question as simplistic” [Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures, #63227, ch. 4 Introduction]. Thornton traces the split back to an early estrangement between Parsva’s and Mahavira’s followers, which “in the end developed into a great schism”. The UNESCO course adds that the Svetambara canon was closed around 500 CE, while the Digambara canon remained open [Thornton, #55051; UNESCO course, #81379].

Thornton, writing as a Victorian missionary-scholar in a book subtitled “Some minor religious sects in India”, treats Jainism as one of three “minor” sects. He nevertheless rejects the older view of Weber, Lassen and Barth that it was an offshoot of Buddhism. Following Jacobi and Oldenberg, he concludes that “that which Buddhists and Jaina have in common, comes in every case from older Brahman sources”, that “in fundamental points the Buddhists and the Jaina are at variance”, and that Jainism is “a development of Brahmanism” [Thornton, Parsi, Jaina and Sikh, #55051, ch. II]. Archer, a mid-twentieth-century comparativist (his edition counts a world population of “about two and a half billion”), lists “the Jainist Mahavira” alongside Moses, Zoroaster, Lao-tze, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Muhammad and Nanak among the founders of the living faiths, and estimates the Jains at about 1,500,000 [Archer, Faiths Men Live By, #55131, ch. 1].

Merchants, Kings and the Migration South

Thornton counted about 1,400,000 Jains in 1898, “mostly traders, merchants, or bankers”. “It is even said that half the mercantile transactions of India pass through their hands.” He describes their charity as “boundless”, and they “form the chief supporters of the beast hospitals”. He also lists their pilgrimage centres: Satrunjaya hill at Palitana, the white-marble temples of Mount Abu, Parasnath, where nineteen Tirthankaras are said to have died, and the southern basti and bettu shrines at Sravana Belgola [Thornton, #55051, “Jaina Temples”]. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism chronology records that “according to Jain history, Emperor Chandragupta Maurya abdicates; becomes Jain monk” [Jones & Ryan, #42241, Chronology]. Allen cites the Sravana Belgola inscription recording a migration south “under the direction of their leader Bhadrabahu”, who foretold a famine in Ujjain. He finds “striking evidence of wide-ranging support for the Jain religion in the South in the first centuries of the Common Era”. He also notes that “many of the Jain immigrants who came south would have been Brahmin by caste” [Allen, Coromandel, #65507, ch. 4 “Jains and Sangams”]. Indudharan Menon likewise lists Jainism with Buddhism among the influences on Kerala before Brahman dominance [Menon, Hereditary Physicians of Kerala, #43905].

Modern Ahimsa: Gandhi to Chitrabhanu

The UNESCO course states that “the idea of ahimsa proposed by Mahavira was later taken up by Mahatma Gandhi and transformed into an instrument of struggle against British domination, for the independence of India” [UNESCO course, #81379, trans.]. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism describes a Jain who carried the doctrine abroad: “Chitrabhanu became an advocate of AHIMSA (nonviolence) during the same period that Mohandas Karamchand GANDHI pursued his nonviolent struggle for Indian independence. After the upsurge of violence afflicting the Western world during the 1960s, Chitrabhanu made a conscious decision to spread ahimsa around the world. In 1970, he was invited to the Second Spiritual Summit Conference in Geneva” [Jones & Ryan, Encyclopedia of Hinduism, #42241, “Chitrabhanu”]. Modern Jain monasticism has also drawn polemic. In 1988 Osho reported that the Terapanth sect of Acharya Tulsi, “more than seventeen hundred monks and double that number of nuns”, was facing “exposures upon exposures” by former disciples alleging sexual exploitation despite the vow of celibacy. According to Osho, Acharya Tulsi first sought a government ban on the book and then dropped the action [Osho, No Mind: The Flowers of Eternity, #46664, ch. 6]. These are allegations as Osho relayed them. A doctrine designed to free one soul from karmic matter thus became a political method in the anti-colonial struggle and, after 1970, an export to the Western spiritual market.

Key points

• Jains hold their faith to be eternal, revealed by 24 Tirthankaras (“ford-makers”). Sacred Places of the World calls them “mostly mythical” and likens them to Hindu avatars.
• Menen calls Mahavira the 24th Tirthankara, “erroneously considered” the founder. Osho says Jains neglect Rishabhdeva and that the West sees Mahavira as originator. Thornton, following Jacobi, calls Parsva the probable founder.
• Traditional dates are c. 599-527 BCE (Encyclopedia of Hinduism; the Digambaras give 510 for his death). Scholarly alternatives include 549-477, c. 468, and the “short chronology” c. 425 BCE (Wikipedia).
• Karma is subtle matter clinging to the soul. Liberation is the soul’s isolation (kaivalya), reached through strict asceticism (UNESCO course; Thornton’s nine tattva).
• In Jainism ahimsa is “an extremely elaborated doctrine”. It extends to elements and plants, forbids monks to cook or build, and forbids lay agriculture.
• The Svetambara and Digambara branches split over nudity, canon and women’s capacity for Nirvana, a split traced in part to the loss of the 14 Purvas (Van Voorst).
• Thornton’s 1898 survey calls Jainism a “minor sect” but establishes its independence from Buddhism. Archer counts Mahavira among the founders of world faiths.
• Jain merchants, a royal convert (Chandragupta Maurya, per Jain tradition) and a southern migration under Bhadrabahu spread the faith. Its ahimsa passed through Gandhi to Chitrabhanu’s global mission (Geneva, 1970).