Jainism

Jainism takes its name from the Jinas, the “conquerors” who have overcome attachment and aversion. Jains believe that in each great cycle of time, 24 such teachers appear. They call them TirthankarasTirthankara A “ford-maker”: one of twenty-four liberated teachers who show the way across the river of rebirth. Mahavira was the last. Glossary, “ford-makers”, because they build a crossing over the river of rebirth.

The last Tirthankara, Vardhamana, called Mahavira (“great hero”), lived on the Ganges plain in the 6th–5th century BCE, at the same time as the Buddha. Born a prince near Vaishali, he left home at thirty, lived twelve years as a wandering ascetic, attained omniscience (kevala jnanakevala jnana Perfect, all-knowing knowledge, attained by a soul freed from karma. Glossary) and taught for thirty years. Historians also accept his predecessor, Parshvanatha, as a probable historical figure.

Jain monks and merchants carried the teaching west to Mathura and Gujarat and south to Karnataka. Tradition holds that the emperor Chandragupta Maurya became a Jain monk and died at Shravanabelagola. Jain kings, ministers and merchants built some of India’s finest temples, such as those at Mount Abu and on the hill of Shatrunjaya.

After Mahavira’s liberation, traditionally dated 527 BCE though many scholars prefer about 425 BCE, leadership of the community passed to his chief disciples, the ganadharas, and then to a line of teachers. Their teaching was held in memory, and much of Jain history turns on how that memory was kept, divided and finally written down.

An early story, told differently by the two traditions, links the teacher Bhadrabahu with a twelve-year famine in Magadha around 300 BCE. He led a group of monks south to Karnataka, accompanied, Digambaras say, by Chandragupta Maurya, while those who stayed in the north held a council at Pataliputra to recite the scriptures. Later accounts trace the division into Digambaras and Shvetambaras to this separation, though historians see the split as gradual. In the east, King Kharavela of Kalinga recorded his support for Jain monks in an inscription at Udayagiri in the 2nd or 1st century BCE, and at Mathura dedications from around the 1st century CE show a thriving lay community, with many women among the donors.

In the first millennium CE Jainism won royal support across the west and south. The Shvetambara canon was written down at Valabhi in Gujarat in 453 or 466 CE. In the Deccan and Karnataka the Ganga, Kadamba and Rashtrakuta dynasties supported Digambara monks, and teachers such as Kundakunda and Jinasena wrote works that remain central to Digambara thought. In about 981 the Ganga minister Chavundaraya raised the statue of Bahubali at Shravanabelagola, about 17 metres high and still anointed in a great ceremony every twelve years.

From about the 7th century Jainism lost ground in the Tamil country, and later in Karnataka, as Shaiva and Vaishnava devotional movements and, from the 12th century, the Lingayats won royal and popular support. In Gujarat and Rajasthan, by contrast, Jain merchants and ministers flourished. The monk-scholar Hemachandra advised King Kumarapala of Gujarat in the 12th century, and wealthy patrons raised the marble temples of Dilwara at Mount Abu, the first in 1031, and the great temple at Ranakpur in the 15th century.

Under Muslim rule temples were at times destroyed and rebuilt, yet Jain bankers and jewellers served sultans and Mughals alike. In the 1580s the Shvetambara teacher Hiravijaya Suri visited Akbar’s court and persuaded the emperor to restrict animal slaughter on Jain holy days. The same centuries brought reform from within. In the 15th century Lonka Shah, a layman from Gujarat, questioned image worship; the movement he inspired led to the Sthanakvasi tradition, and in 1760 Acharya Bhikshu founded the Terapanthi order. Among Digambaras, a lay-led movement of the 17th century challenged the authority of the bhattarakas, the clerics who ran temple institutions.

Under British rule Jains organised as a modern community, founding associations, printing their texts and opening them to Western scholars. The German Indologist Hermann Jacobi showed that Jainism was not an offshoot of Buddhism, as some had thought. Virchand Gandhi spoke for Jainism at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, and the Jain thinker Shrimad Rajchandra became a spiritual guide to the young Mahatma Gandhi.

In the 20th century Jain emigrants settled in East Africa, and from there and from India many moved to Britain and North America, where community centres, such as the one opened in Leicester in the 1980s, now serve them. In India, the Terapanthi leader Acharya Tulsi launched the Anuvrat movement of “small vows” for people of all faiths in 1949, and in 2014 the central government recognised Jains as a national religious minority. Debate continues over sallekhana, the ancient practice of fasting to death at the end of life, which a Rajasthan court ruled illegal in 2015 before the Supreme Court suspended its decision.

Jains teach that the universe is eternal and uncreated, and full of countless souls (jivajiva The soul, of which Jains believe every living being has one, bound by karma. Glossary). Every soul is by nature pure, all-knowing and blissful, but it is weighed down by karmakarma Action and its consequences. Good and bad deeds shape a person’s future, in this life and in lives to come. Glossary, which Jains understand as a fine kind of matter that sticks to the soul through passions and harmful acts.

Liberation comes by stopping new karma and wearing away the old, through the Three Jewels: right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. A liberated soul rises to the top of the universe and rests there forever in pure knowledge.

At the heart of right conduct is ahimsaahimsa Non-violence: not harming any living being in thought, word or deed. Central to Jainism. Glossary, non-violence towards every living being, down to plants and the smallest insects. Jains also stress anekantavada, the “many-sidedness” of truth: no single viewpoint grasps reality whole.

Monks and nuns take five great vows in full: non-violence, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity and non-attachment. They walk barefoot, own almost nothing, eat once or twice a day what is offered to them, and some carry a soft brush to sweep insects from their path.

Lay Jains keep lesser forms of the same vows. They are strictly vegetarian, many avoid root vegetables and do not eat after sunset, and they choose work that harms as little life as possible, which led many into trade and banking. Fasting, from a single day to a month, is a widely respected discipline.

In temples, Jains honour images of the Tirthankaras with offerings of water, sandalwood, flowers, rice and lamps, not to ask for favours but to remember the qualities of perfected souls.

The teachings of Mahavira were first passed on orally. The Shvetambara tradition holds that its canon, the Agamas, was written down at the council of Valabhi in the 5th century CE. The Digambaras believe the original texts were lost and rely on later works by their own teachers.

The Tattvartha Sutra by Umasvati, a compact summary of Jain doctrine, is accepted by both traditions. The Kalpa Sutra, with its lives of the Tirthankaras, is read aloud each year during Paryushana, and its illustrated manuscripts are treasures of Indian painting.