Mahāvīra

Mahāvīra (“Great Hero”), born Vardhamāna, is revered by Jains as the twenty-fourth and last tīrthaṅkara (“ford-maker”) of the present cosmic age — the latest in a line of perfected teachers who have shown the way across the river of rebirth. He was a contemporary of the Gautama Buddha, born a little earlier in the same region of the eastern Gaṅgā plain, and like him a prince who renounced the world. According to Śvetāmbara tradition he lived from 599 to 527 BCE; most historians now place him later, roughly 540–468 or 497–425 BCE. He did not found Jainism — Jains regard it as eternal, and his predecessor Pārśvanātha is probably historical — but he reorganised its community and gave its teaching the form in which it has survived for two and a half thousand years: a path of non-violence toward all living beings, of extreme austerity and self-discipline, of liberation of the soul from the matter of karma, and of humility before the many-sidedness of truth.

Life

The earliest accounts of Mahāvīra’s life are in the Śvetāmbara canon — especially the Ācārāṅga Sūtra and the Kalpa Sūtra (attributed to Bhadrabāhu); Digambara sources differ in details.

Birth

Vardhamāna was born at Kuṇḍagrāma, a suburb of Vaiśālī (near modern Patna, Bihar), the capital of the Vajjian confederacy, a republic of Kṣatriya clans. His father, Siddhārtha, was a chief of the Jñātṛ (Nāta) clan; his mother, Triśalā, was a sister of the Licchavi chief Ceṭaka. Jain tradition tells that before his birth his mother dreamed fourteen (Digambaras: sixteen) auspicious dreams — a white elephant, a bull, a lion, the goddess Lakṣmī, a garland, the moon, the sun, a banner, a full vase, a lotus lake, the ocean, a celestial palace, a heap of jewels and a smokeless fire — which signified the birth of a great soul. (Śvetāmbaras add a strange story: the embryo was first conceived in the womb of a Brahmin woman, Devānandā, and transferred by the god Indra’s general to Triśalā, since a tīrthaṅkara must be born a Kṣatriya.) He was named Vardhamāna, “increasing”, because the family’s prosperity increased from the time of his conception.

Renunciation

He grew up in luxury. Śvetāmbaras say he married Princess Yaśodā and had a daughter, Priyadarśanā; Digambaras say he remained unmarried. Out of respect for his parents, he waited until their death before renouncing the world. At the age of thirty, with the permission of his elder brother Nandivardhana, he gave away his possessions, went to a park outside the town, plucked out his hair in five handfuls, and took the vow of the homeless ascetic: “I shall abstain from all sinful acts, for life.”

Twelve years of austerity

For the next twelve and a half years, Vardhamāna wandered as a naked ascetic through the lands of eastern India, practising austerities of legendary severity. The Ācārāṅga Sūtra describes them in a remarkably vivid and early passage:

He wandered without a robe… In the cold season he meditated in the shade; in the hot season he sat in the sun… He ate only rough food — rice, pounded jujube, beans… For more than a year he did not drink water… Sometimes he ate only on the sixth day, or the eighth, the tenth or the twelfth… Men and women struck him; dogs bit him; he endured it all… He meditated, looking at a wall, day and night… Not desiring sleep for the sake of pleasure, he waked up himself, and slept only a little.

He was attacked by herdsmen, set upon by dogs in the land of Lāḍha, tortured by villagers who took him for a spy. He bore everything without anger. For a period he travelled with another ascetic, Gośāla Maṅkhaliputta, who later founded the fatalist Ājīvika sect; they quarrelled and parted, and Gośāla became his bitter rival.

Omniscience

In the thirteenth year, under a śāla tree on the bank of the river Ṛjupālikā near the village of Jṛmbhikagrāma, after a fast of two and a half days, sitting in a squatting posture in the heat of the sun, Vardhamāna attained kevala-jñāna — omniscience, perfect knowledge of all things, past, present and future, the state of a liberated soul still in a body. He became a Jina (“conqueror”) and an arhat (“worthy one”), and from then on was called Mahāvīra.

Teaching

For the next thirty years he taught throughout Magadha, Videha and the surrounding kingdoms, spending the rainy seasons in towns like Rājagṛha, Vaiśālī and Nālandā. His first disciples were eleven learned Brahmins, led by Indrabhūti Gautama, who became his chief disciple, the gaṇadharas. He organised a fourfold community (caturvidha saṅgha) of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen; tradition says it numbered 14,000 monks, 36,000 nuns, 159,000 laymen and 318,000 laywomen — the large number of nuns is notable. He attracted royal patronage, including (by Jain tradition) King Śreṇika (Bimbisāra) of Magadha.

Liberation

At about seventy-two, at Pāvāpurī near Rājagṛha, Mahāvīra gave his last sermon over two days and nights, and attained final liberation (nirvāṇa, or mokṣa) at the moment of the new moon of the month of Kārtika — the night Jains celebrate as Dīpāvalī, when, the Kalpa Sūtra says, the eighteen kings of the region lit lamps “since the light of intelligence is gone”. His chief disciple Gautama, attached to his teacher, attained omniscience that same night, upon giving up even that attachment.

Teaching

Mahāvīra left no writings; his teachings were memorised by his disciples and later compiled in the Āgamas. Their core, as preserved in the canon, includes:

All beings love life

The Ācārāṅga Sūtra opens with the doctrine of the six classes of living beings — earth, water, fire, air, plants and moving creatures — and the duty not to harm them:

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure, unchangeable, eternal law, which the wise ones who know the world have proclaimed… All beings love life; they like pleasure and hate pain, shun destruction and like to live, they long to live. To all, life is dear.

You are the one whom you intend to kill; you are the one whom you intend to tyrannise.

This is the foundation of Jain ahiṃsā, which Mahāvīra extended further than any teacher before or since.

The five vows

To Pārśvanātha’s four restraints — non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing and non-possession — Mahāvīra added celibacy (brahmacarya), making the five great vows (mahāvratas) of Jain monks and nuns. He also insisted on complete renunciation, including of clothing — though whether he required nudity of all monks is the root of the Digambara–Śvetāmbara dispute.

The soul and karma

Every living being has an eternal soul (jīva), by nature possessing infinite knowledge, perception, energy and bliss, but bound by karmic matter that it attracts through passion. Liberation is achieved by stopping the inflow of karma through restraint and vigilance, and by destroying accumulated karma through austerity — above all fasting — and meditation. The liberated soul rises to the top of the universe and dwells forever in its pure state.

Self-conquest

Mahāvīra’s ethic is one of self-reliance. There is no creator God who can save; each soul must free itself. The Uttarādhyayana Sūtra — a collection of his teachings in verse, traditionally his last sermon — says:

Fight with yourself; why fight with external foes? He who conquers himself through himself will obtain happiness. Difficult to conquer is oneself; but when that is conquered, everything is conquered. (9.35–36)

Though a man should conquer thousands and thousands of valiant foes, greater will be his victory if he conquers nobody but himself.

Equality

Mahāvīra admitted people of all castes, and women, to his community; he taught that a person’s worth depends on conduct, not birth: “One does not become a śramaṇa by shaving the head, nor a Brahmin by chanting Oṃ, nor a sage by living in the forest… One becomes a śramaṇa by equanimity, a Brahmin by chastity, a sage by knowledge, an ascetic by austerity” (Uttarādhyayana 25.31–32). He preached in Ardhamāgadhī, the vernacular Prakrit of his region, not in Sanskrit.

Many-sidedness

Later Jain philosophy credits Mahāvīra with the seeds of Anekāntavāda, the doctrine that reality is many-sided. In the canon he answers metaphysical questions — is the world eternal or not? is the soul the same as the body or not? — by distinguishing respects: the world is eternal in its substance and non-eternal in its modes. Where the Buddha refused to answer such questions, Mahāvīra answered “yes and no”.

Mahāvīra and the Buddha

Mahāvīra and the Buddha were contemporaries, perhaps a generation apart, teaching in the same towns to the same audiences; both were Kṣatriya princes who renounced the world, rejected the Vedic sacrifice and caste privilege, taught karma and rebirth, and founded monastic orders. The Buddhist scriptures refer to him as Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta, “the naked ascetic of the Nāta clan”, and present him critically. The differences between them are sharp. Mahāvīra affirmed an eternal soul; the Buddha denied one. Mahāvīra taught extreme austerity; the Buddha had tried it and rejected it for the “middle way”. Mahāvīra held that any act of harm binds karma; the Buddha located karma in intention. The two religions they shaped have run side by side through Indian history ever since.

Legacy

Mahāvīra is worshipped by Jains in temples throughout India, typically shown seated in meditation or standing in the posture of “abandoning the body” (kāyotsarga), naked or white-robed, with the lion as his emblem. His birthday, Mahāvīr Jayantī, is a national holiday in India; the 2,500th anniversary of his nirvāṇa was celebrated nationally in 1974–75. Through Jain ethics, he shaped Indian vegetarianism, the ideal of non-violence, and — through Mahatma Gandhi — the politics of the modern world.

Mahāvīra in conversation

His deepest line is the shortest: “All beings love life; to all, life is dear.” And the most practical: “Conquer yourself — then you have conquered everything.”