Jainism

Tirthankaras and Mahavira

An introduction to a volume on Jainism and ecology states that the tradition arose in northeast India more than twenty-five hundred years ago. Jains hold that twenty-four Tirthankaras founded the faith, and the last of them, Vardhamana Mahavira, also called the Jina, most likely lived in the time of the Buddha. The same introduction notes that recent scholarship places the Buddha in the fourth century BCE, and it says Mahavira's family followed Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara, who possibly taught in the eighth century BCE.

Sources give different dates for Mahavira. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives traditional dates of 599 to 527 or 510 BCE, places his teaching in Magadha and calls him the last Jina of the current cosmic period. A psychiatric review of Jain death practices gives c. 540 to 468 BCE. The introduction adds that few ruins survive from 1500 to 300 BCE, so exact dates remain uncertain.

Texts and early scholars

The Acaranga Sutra, the oldest surviving Jain manual of monastic rules, is dated to about 400 BCE in one source and to the fourth to third centuries BCE in another. The Stanford entry dates the canonical literature as a whole to roughly the third century BCE through the sixth century CE. The Tattvartha Sutra, attributed to Umasvati (also written Umasvamin), is dated to about 150 to 400 CE and is accepted by both main sects.

Later authors named in the introduction include Jinasena and Virasena around 800 to 820 CE, Haribhadra around 750 CE and Hemacandra around 1150 CE, whose works include stories, epics, philosophy and poetry. The Svetambara leader Jinacandrasuri II (1541 to 1613) is described as gaining influence at the court of the emperor Akbar and securing protection for pilgrimage sites.

Sect formation and spread

The introduction reports that the two main branches, Digambara and Svetambara, developed in geographic isolation and had become distinct by the early centuries CE. Accounts of the split itself differ by sect, and the sources reviewed here do not settle its cause or date. Jain images appear in northern Indian excavations from about 300 BCE, and Greek reports from the time of Alexander distinguish Brahmanical from Sramanical traditions, a category that includes Jainism and Buddhism.

The same source says Jainism did not develop a missionary tradition but built a strong lay community, and describes diaspora settlement in East Africa, Britain, Japan and North America, the last after the 1965 immigration law changes, a date the source gives only as context for settlement.

Names and sect labels

The sources use Jainism for the tradition and Jain for its adherents, and the Stanford entry uses the adjective Jaina. Mahavira is called the Jina, and the title Tirthankara is glossed in one source as a spiritual teacher. The sect names are descriptive: Digambara means sky clad and refers to monks who renounce all clothing, while Svetambara means white clad and refers to monks and nuns who wear white clothing.

Key terms

Adherents use a set of Sanskrit and Prakrit terms. Jiva is the self or soul and ajiva covers non-self substances such as matter, space and time. Karma is described as subtle matter that adheres to the self. Ahimsa is nonviolence, anekanta or anekantavada is many-sidedness, and kevala (also kaivalya) is liberation, described as omniscience in one source. The three jewels are right view, knowledge and conduct in the Stanford entry, and right knowledge, faith and action in the psychiatric review.

Distinction from confusable traditions

The introduction compares kevala to the Buddhist concept of nirvana, and Greek-period accounts group Jainism and Buddhism as Sramanical traditions. The Stanford entry says Jainas reject a creator god and hold that atoms have always existed. In a 2019 to 2020 survey in India, two-thirds of Jain respondents said they have a lot in common with Hindus, and 54 percent said there is one God with many manifestations; this reports respondents' own views and does not state doctrine.

Mendicant and lay life

According to the introduction, monks and nuns follow strict rules of nonharm that extend to microscopic life (nigoda), and early monastic teaching shows close attention to earth, water, fire, air and plant life. Laypeople are described as generally keeping a vegetarian diet, choosing livelihoods that limit harm, and observing fasts and other austerities. Animal shelters called pinjrapoles in western India are described as a long-standing expression of this concern.

A Pew Research Center survey of adults in India interviewed 109 Jain respondents. Of these, 92 percent said they are vegetarian, 67 percent said they do not eat root vegetables, 81 percent said they perform puja daily and 73 percent said they pray daily. These figures describe self-reported behavior in a small subsample.

Fasting and vows

A medical review of Jain fasting describes fasts ranging from partial restriction of food to complete abstention from food and water, lasting from one day to more than a month. It names fasts such as upavas, ekasana and Ratri Bhojan Tyag (abstaining from food after sunset) and describes Paryushana, a devout period of eight days for Svetambara and ten days for Digambara Jains, with varied fasting. A psychiatric review lists five central principles: ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha.

Karma, rebirth and death practice

The tradition's teachings on karma and rebirth have their own Machipedia pages, Karma and Reincarnation. A psychiatric review describes sallekhana, also called santhara, as death by ritual fasting, which adherents describe as a thinning of the passions and the body. It says the practice was not granted easily, that candidates were examined by learned persons, and that severe asceticism was reserved for monks and nuns. This page does not describe the practice step by step.

Liberation and purification

The tradition teaches that souls are held in rebirth by karmic bonds and that purification removes them, with liberation as the goal. The Stanford entry frames the path as right view, right knowledge and right conduct, with the removal of karmic obstruction leading to unobstructed knowledge. The introduction presents nonviolence as the only true path to liberation and says adherents take vows to purify karma and advance spiritually.

Ethics and everyday conduct

Adherents describe the doctrine of anekanta as a way to view a situation from several perspectives, illustrated by the parable of the blind men and the elephant, with only a person who attains kevala able to grasp the whole. An ethnographic study of second-generation Jains in the United States reports that young members emphasized ahimsa, aparigraha and anekantavada in daily life, drawing on environmental and animal rights movements, more than ritual worship.

Purposes given for the final fast

The psychiatric review reports that, during sallekhana, the person is taught not to seek a better next birth or a heavenly rebirth but to meditate on the Jain deity. It lists three conditions that the tradition has associated with the practice: intolerable personal problems, old age and incurable disease. These are the tradition's own terms and are not medical criteria.

Historical and philosophical scholarship

Scholarship dates Jain texts more securely than the tradition's earliest history. The Stanford entry assigns the canonical literature to roughly the third century BCE through the sixth century CE, and the introduction notes thin archaeological evidence for the period before 300 BCE. The Stanford entry describes Jaina metaphysics as a dualism of self and non-self with an atomist account of matter, and it describes the seven viewpoints of nayavada as each partial when taken as the whole truth.

Surveys and ethnography

The Pew survey interviewed 29,999 adults in India face to face between November 2019 and March 2020, of whom 109 were Jain, and the page describes Jains as a sliver of the national population. A 2012 student ethnography at one North Carolina Jain center combined participant observation with eight interviews. Both are limited in size and scope, and neither measures beliefs about karma or reincarnation.

Clinical and health research

PubMed searches for Jainism, sallekhana, santhara, Jain fasting and Jain religion returned records on religion and health, fasting and diabetes, and death practices, and no controlled trial of a Jain practice was identified. The records found are a medical review of fasting and diabetes, a cultural essay on dying, a psychiatric review of sallekhana and a bibliometric count that found 655 health articles on Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism combined. The reviewed abstracts do not report Jainism-specific counts, and the searches were not exhaustive.

The 1992 essay in Social Science and Medicine compares attitudes to death in Christian, Hindu and Jain traditions with modern medicalized dying. Only its abstract was read, so its detailed arguments are not summarized here.

Fasting and medical conditions

The medical review of Jain fasts classifies them by suitability for people with diabetes. It describes longer fasts as high risk and discourages them for anyone taking glucose-lowering treatment, and it reports hypoglycemia and dehydration among the concerns. It states that Jainism allows concessions for people who are ill or traveling, that a physician may suggest a less demanding fast, and that patients should be free to break a fast if they have significant discomfort.

The review concerns diabetes only, and its guidance should not be applied to other conditions. Anyone with a medical condition, or taking medication, is advised by the review to seek assessment before a fast. Fasting should not delay or replace necessary medical care.

Care boundaries around fasting to death

The psychiatric review states that whether ritual fasting to death is related to suicide has been debated since the time of the early Jain teachers, and that Jain authors describe it as distinct because of its nonviolent, self-transcendent aim. The authors state that the paper offers no clinical assessment tools or risk criteria and does not show how a clinician should distinguish the practice from suicide in an individual patient. Anyone in distress should seek support from a qualified health professional or local crisis service.

Cultural attribution and sources of harm

The sources reviewed do not report coercive teachers, spiritual abuse, unsafe substances or financial harms connected with Jain practice. This is an absence in the sources reviewed, not evidence that none occur. The two main sects hold different canons and practices, so a statement about one branch should not be applied to the other. An ethnographic study of diaspora Jains reports an absence of religious authority outside India, which means no single body in that setting speaks for the tradition.