Mahavira

Mahavira, born Vardhamana, was an Indian ascetic and religious teacher of the sixth or fifth century BCE whom Jains revere as the twenty-fourth and last Tirthankara, or "ford-maker", of the present age. He reorganised and gave lasting shape to Jainism, a tradition built on non-violence, self-discipline and the liberation of the soul from karma. A contemporary of the Buddha in the same region of north-eastern India, he is one of the founding figures of the religious and philosophical ferment that also produced Buddhism.

Scholars accept that Mahavira was a real historical person, but the details of his life are uncertain and come mainly from Jain scriptures written down centuries later. Jain tradition dates his birth to 599 BCE. The Svetambara branch places his death, or nirvana, in 527 BCE; Digambara reckonings differ. Many historians think these dates are too early. Because Buddhist texts present Mahavira as a slightly older contemporary of the Buddha, and both are said to have lived under the Magadhan kings Bimbisara and Ajatashatru, his dates depend on the Buddha's. Those who follow the shorter chronology for the Buddha place Mahavira's death around 425 BCE or a little later.

Mahavira was not the founder of Jainism in Jain eyes. Jains believe in a line of twenty-four Tirthankaras stretching back over vast ages. His predecessor, Parshvanatha, is placed about 250 years earlier, and many historians think he too may have been a real teacher whose community Mahavira's parents followed and Mahavira later reformed.

According to the scriptures, Vardhamana was born in Kundagrama, near the city of Vaishali in what is now Bihar, to Siddhartha, a chief of the Naya clan, and Trishala, a Licchavi noblewoman. He belonged to the kshatriya, warrior and ruling, class. Jain traditions differ on whether he married: Svetambaras hold that he married Yashoda and had a daughter, Priyadarshana, while Digambaras hold that he never married. The Svetambara tradition also preserves birth legends, such as the transfer of his embryo from a Brahmin woman to Trishala by a divine being, which Digambaras do not accept.

At about thirty, after his parents' death in some accounts, he gave up his possessions and became a wandering ascetic. For some twelve and a half years he practised severe austerities, fasting, meditating in exposed places and enduring hardship and abuse in silence. Digambara tradition holds that he abandoned clothing altogether, and nudity remains the practice of Digambara monks. The texts describe him moving through the kingdoms of the Ganges plain, at one point travelling with Makkhali Gosala, later leader of the rival Ajivika sect.

Jains believe that at about forty-two or forty-three, meditating under a sal tree beside the Rijuvalika river, he attained kevala jnana, perfect and infinite knowledge. From then on he was called Mahavira, "great hero", and Jina, "conqueror", from which the name Jain derives. For about thirty years he taught across the region, gathering a large following of monks, nuns and lay people. His eleven chief disciples, the ganadharas, led by Indrabhuti Gautama, were Brahmins who converted, according to tradition. Jain sources claim kings of Magadha among his supporters.

He died, Jains believe, at about seventy-two at Pava, identified with Pavapuri in Bihar, attaining moksha, final liberation. Jains commemorate the event at Diwali.

Jain thought, as attributed to Mahavira, holds that the universe is eternal and uncreated, and that it contains countless individual souls, jivas, each by nature capable of infinite knowledge and bliss. Souls are weighed down by karma, which Jains understand as a fine physical matter that clings to the soul as a result of actions, especially harmful ones, and keeps it trapped in the cycle of rebirth. Liberation comes from stopping the inflow of new karma and burning away the old through discipline and austerity.

The heart of the ethical path is ahimsa, non-violence towards all living beings, which in Jain understanding include not only animals but plants and tiny creatures in earth, water, air and fire. Monks and nuns take five great vows: non-violence, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity and non-possession. Lay followers keep lesser forms of the same vows. Right faith, right knowledge and right conduct, the "three jewels", together lead to freedom.

Jains also credit Mahavira with the doctrine of anekantavada, "many-sidedness": reality is complex, and any single statement about it captures only a partial viewpoint. Later Jain logicians developed this into theories of standpoints, naya, and of conditional predication, syadvada. Unlike the Buddha, who taught that there is no permanent self, Mahavira affirmed a real, eternal soul, and he advocated a far more rigorous asceticism than the Buddhist "middle way" between indulgence and self-mortification.

Mahavira wrote nothing. His teachings were transmitted orally by his disciples and later collected as the Agamas. Jain tradition says much was lost after a famine around 300 BCE, a period also linked with the story that Chandragupta Maurya became a Jain monk and died in the south, which historians treat as an old but unproven tradition. Disagreements over clothing and over which texts were authentic contributed to the split between Svetambaras, the "white-clad", and Digambaras, the "sky-clad". The Svetambara canon was fixed at a council at Valabhi in the fifth century CE; Digambaras regard the original canon as lost.

The earliest surviving images of Mahavira come from Mathura and date from around the first century BCE to the second century CE, the age of the Kushan Empire. Jainism never became a mass religion like Buddhism or Hinduism, but it has survived continuously in India for over two and a half thousand years, today with several million followers, many of them in commerce. Its insistence on non-violence, vegetarianism and respect for other viewpoints shaped wider Indian culture, and Mahatma Gandhi, who grew up in Gujarat among Jains and was influenced by the Jain thinker Shrimad Rajchandra, drew on it in forming his own idea of ahimsa. Mahavira's place in Indian philosophy rests on this ethical and logical legacy as much as on his role as a religious founder.