History

Parshvanatha

The twenty-third Tirthankara is the earlier of the two figures for whom there is evidence beyond tradition, generally placed in the ninth or eighth century BCE. His followers observed four restraints, to which Mahavira is described as having added the vow of chastity as a separate fifth — a detail that reads as a real historical seam rather than a later tidying.

Mahavira

The twenty-fourth Tirthankara, a contemporary of the Buddha, taught in the eastern Gangetic plain in roughly the sixth to fifth centuries BCE. The tradition as practised today descends from his teaching. The traditions differ on the details of his life — including whether he married before renouncing the world — and on the dating of his liberation.

The division

Around the early centuries CE the community separated into two traditions, Śvetāmbara ("white-clad") and Digambara ("sky-clad"), over monastic practice — chiefly whether an ascetic may possess clothing. The division carries doctrinal weight beyond dress: the traditions differ on whether women may attain liberation, on the gender of the nineteenth Tirthankara, and on whether the ancient Agamas survive.

Traditional accounts associate the split with a famine and a migration south led by Bhadrabahu. This site does not present either tradition's account of the separation as the settled one.

Scripture

Śvetāmbara tradition holds a canon of Agamas, redacted at councils and committed to writing over several centuries. Digambara tradition holds that the original canon was lost, and grounds itself in later expository works. Both keep libraries of extraordinary manuscript wealth — the collections at Jaisalmer and Patan among them.

Patronage and building

Jain communities received royal patronage across many centuries and regions — from Kharavela of Kalinga, through the Rashtrakutas and Gangas in the Deccan, to the Solankis of Gujarat, under whom the marble temples at Dilwara were raised. The great temple sites of Shatrunjaya, Girnar, Ranakpur and Shravanabelagola are the material record of that support.

The modern community

Jains today are a small community with a disproportionate presence in trade, scholarship and philanthropy, concentrated in western and southern India with a substantial diaspora in Britain, North America and East Africa. That diaspora is why this site shows every event time in the reader's own timezone.

This page states what is broadly agreed by historians and flags where the traditions differ. It needs review by a qualified reader before it should be relied on.