महावीर निर्वाण
Mahavir Nirvana (Diwali) · also Diwali, Nirvana Kalyanak
The liberation of Mahavira. Observed as Diwali, with lamps marking the departed light.
Mahavira attained nirvana at Pavapuri, in the small hours of the new-moon night of Kartik, at the age of seventy-two. On the same night Indrabhuti Gautama, his first disciple, attained omniscience.
The tradition holds that the assembled kings lit lamps because the light of knowledge had gone out of the world, and that this is what the lamps of Diwali are. Jains keep the festival, but the content is entirely this: it is a night of remembrance rather than of prosperity, and the ritual is a reading of the last discourse rather than a rite to Lakshmi.
Because the death is fixed to a lunar date, this is one of the anchors of the Jain era: the Vira Nirvana Samvat counts from it, and is still used to date Jain publications and inscriptions.
How it is kept
- Lamps are lit, and the night is kept with recitation — in many places the Uttaradhyayana Sutra, held to record the last discourse.
- Pavapuri draws large numbers; the Jal Mandir there stands on the site associated with the cremation.
- The following morning is the Jain new year in most reckonings, and the first day of the new Vira Nirvana Samvat.
Both traditions observe the nirvana on this night. Accounts of the day differ in detail — the Digambara tradition, holding that Mahavira’s teaching after omniscience was conveyed as divya-dhvani rather than as ordinary speech, does not attribute a final discourse to him in the way the Svetambara reading of the Uttaradhyayana Sutra does.